






I* J% 



'of i* 



<j. *-TVi' JS 



# 



9 



vS 1 




**2ii& 




<FA 






*v "v* ~ • » • * aP ^* * 









:$<?■ 






r % y 













v \»^5^>^ ^»*A1:..% ^.jafeV 









^ 



lift ^^ :«SlK-^ -Iflfe- ^<^:^ 



THE WORLD PERIL 



AMERICA'S INTEREST 
IN THE WAR 



BY 

MEMBERS OF THE FACULTY OF 
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 



PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS 
PRINCETON 

LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFORD 
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

1917 






Copyright, 1917, by 
Princeton University Press 

Published October, 1917 
Printed in the United States of America 



OCT 25 1917 

©CI.A476726 




CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction 1 

John Geiee Htbben 

Chaptee I 

American Rights Imperilled 5 

Heney van Dyke 

Chaptee II 
Democracy Imperilled 19 

Thomas Jeffeeson Weetenbakeb 

Chaptee III 
International Law Imperilled 53 

Edwaed S. Cob win 

Chaptee IV 

The World Balance of Power Imperilled 82 

Mason W. Tylee 

Chaptee V 

The World Peril and the Two Americas 106 

Clifton R. Hall 

Chaptee VI 
The World Peril and American Interests 

in the Far East 190 

Mason W. Tylee 

Chaptee VII 

The World Peril and World Peace 213 

Philip Maeshall Beown 



THE WORLD PERIL 

INTRODUCTION 

The Department of History and Politics of 
Princeton University offers the articles of this 
volume as an especial contribution to the more 
accurate understanding of the reasons for the 
entry of the United States into the European 
War, and to the more vivid appreciation of all 
that is involved in the outcome of this conflict. 
There is an imperative need today that every 
American citizen should clearly discern the full 
significance of a Teutonic victory. This volume 
will greatly aid in illuminating the understand- 
ing of any who may still be unable or unwilling 
to appreciate the bearing of the issues of this 
war upon their own country and the world. It 
is well from time to time as occasion offers to 
refresh our memory and fortify our resolution 
by a frank rehearsal from a new point of view 
of the proved facts of German political policy 
and ambition. 

To establish a Germanic world empire, to 
realize her arrogant pretensions that the Ger- 
mans are a superior race and destined by divine 
decree to subdue all peoples to an unquestion- 
ing obedience to her autocratic sway, with an 
insolent insistence that all means are justified 

1 



2 THE WORLD PERIL 

by the sacred end of the German will to rule — 
broken treaties, the ingenuity of scientific sav- 
agery, campaigns of frightfulness, wanton 
cruelty, mocking the restraints of moral law, 
the dictates of mercy, the demands of decency 
and the promptings of chivalry — this is the 
Teutonic program. Americans should not allow 
themselves to forget this or to minimize its 
import, 

A nation that has been inhuman in war will 
be merciless in victory. Within the last few 
days Count Zu Reventlow has been quoted in 
the press as saying that the moral law is bind- 
ing as between Germans, but not as between 
Germans and other nations. If this is an ethical 
creed obtaining in war, it will not be set aside 
by a nation flushed with victory and glutted 
with the spoils and indemnities of war. Our 
pacifist friends whose well meaning utterances 
in this present crisis are nothing more or less 
than treason should consider the inevitable ten- 
dency of their peace propaganda. It means 
either a direct and immediate surrender to Ger- 
man demands and the consummation of a Ger- 
man victory, or an inconclusive outcome of the 
present war, affording to Germany the oppor- 
tunity and the means to reconstruct her war 
machine and precipitate within the next genera- 
tion another world conflict and agony. 

We dare not pay the price of a premature 
peace. Rather let us be willing to undergo any 
sacrifice, to suffer, to endure to the end all the 
miserable woe and sorrow of a protracted war. 



INTEODUCTION 3 

If Germany has been misrepresented and is 
fighting a fair war in a fair way with the legiti- 
mate purpose solely to defend her own land and 
her own people, then this war should end at 
once and an equitable compromise be sought 
and secured. If, however, one is constrained to 
believe that the success of Germany will prove 
the scourge of the world, then there is no escape 
from the grim conclusion that this war must 
be fought to a finish, whatever may be the ac- 
cumulated misery for us and our children. 

John Geier Hibben. 
Princeton, N. J., 
August 27, 1917. 



CHAPTER I 

AMERICAN RIGHTS IMPERILLED 

Conscientious Objectors of the Fourth of 
July Type 1 

Hon. Henby van Dyke, D.C.L. (Oxon.) 

The Fourth of July is a good day for setting 
forth the case and maintaining the cause of 
true Conscientious Objectors, like the men who 
signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. 
This is what I propose to do. 

The name "conscientious objector' ' has suf- 
fered much from its modern appropriation by 
people whose conscience centres in the idea of 
non-resistance. They think it always wrong to 
fight, even for the protection of justice and hu- 
manity. They object to the use of force even 
to defend the right against the force which is 
used to inflict wrong. Persons who have had 
that particular kind of conscience long enough 
to make sure that it is not a cloak for cowardice 
or sedition, should be allowed to obey it. If a 
man cannot fight for his country, let him work. 
If he will not work, neither let him eat. 

But let him not dare to claim that he is the 
real or the only "conscientious objector." He 

1 Address at Madison Barracks, July 4, 1917. 
5 



6 THE WORLD PERIL 

belongs to a small and narrow class. There are 
millions of men who have a larger and more 
heroic conscience. They object to the tyranny 
of unrighteousness even more than they object 
to fighting. And they have not been afraid to 
risk everything in the defense of justice, lib- 
erty, and human rights. 

The English men who met at Runnymede in 
1215 to force the Magna Carta of English lib- 
erties from their base King John were con- 
scientious objectors to a rotten regal autocracy. 

William the Silent, who raised the banner of 
freedom in the Netherlands in the sixteenth cen- 
tury, was a conscientious objector to the brutal 
tyranny of Philip II of Spain. He wrote in 
1568: "We are unable, by reason of our loyal 
service due to his Majesty, and of our true com- 
passion for the faithful lieges, to look with tran- 
quillity any longer at such murders, robberies, 
outrages and agony. We take up arms there- 
fore to oppose the violent tyranny of the Span- 
iards, by the help of the merciful God, who is 
the enemy of all bloodthirstiness. \ ' 

Hampden, Pym, and Cromwell were conscien- 
tious objectors in the seventeenth century when 
they resisted the claim of King Charles I to the 
divine right of a monarch to impose a people's 
wrong. They fought him and they beat him. 

The signers of the American Declaration of 
Independence were conscientious objectors in 
1776, when they drew up their famous protest 
against the attempt of the German King of 
England George III, and his fat-witted minis- 



AMERICAN RIGHTS 7 

ter Lord North, to enslave and oppress the 
American colonists by military force. Read the 
history of the American Revolution carefully, 
and you will see that it was not a Rebellion : it 
was a Resistance against an illegal assertion of 
power by an autocrat. It was a repetition of 
the lessons which Great Britain herself had 
taught us in her great objection to the Stuart 
tyranny. It was a prophecy of the causes which 
have brought us to her side today. The reasons 
which forced us to fight against George III in 
1776 are precisely the same as those which bring 
us to take part with Great Britain, and with our 
old and true friend France, in resistance to this 
last unjust and violent assertion by a German 
monarchy, that it has a right to rule the world 
by military might. 

Abraham Lincoln was a conscientious ob- 
jector when he wrote to the men who were try- 
ing to destroy the United States in 1861, "In 
every event, to the extent of my ability, I shall 
repel force by force". 

Woodrow Wilson was a conscientious objector 
when he sent his great message to the United 
States Congress on April 2, 1917, declaring that 
the present, avowed, ruthless "German sub- 
marine warfare against commerce is a warfare 
against mankind". He continued: "I advise 
that the Congress declare the recent course of 
the Imperial German Government to be in fact 
nothing less than war against the Government 
and people of the United States, that it formally 
accept the status of belligerent which has thus 



8 THE WOELD PERIL 

been thrust upon it ; and that it take immediate 
steps not only to put the country in a more 
thorough state of defense, but also to exert all 
its power and employ all its resources to bring 
the German Government to terms, and end the 
war". 

That is a magnificent, measured, sane state- 
ment of the position of true conscientious ob- 
jectors today. It sets forth the aim which they 
have at heart: "to end the war". It states the 
only way by which that end can be achieved, 
by a victory which shall "bring the German 
Government to terms ' \ Let me sum up briefly 
the nature of our objections to Germany's war. 



I. We object to the existence of this war. It 
is a needless, wasteful, horrible conflict which 
should never have been begun. The offense of 
choosing, forcing and beginning it lies on Ger- 
many's head. 

By the head of Germany I mean whatever 
power has actually controlled that country in 
her recent policy and action. 

Some say it is the Kaiser, and many of his 
own remarks seem to indicate that he himself 
is under that impression. 

Others say that he is little more than an im- 
posing figure-head, and that the real power lies 
with a group of men who surround him, his 
counsellors, the great manufacturers, shipping- 
merchants, heads of corporations and Junker 
land-owners. 



AMERICAN EIGHTS 9 

Others say that the ruling class in Germany 
is the military and naval clique which had built 
up an enormous instrument of war, fitted with 
all modern devices for destroying life and prop- 
erty, and which could not be content until they 
had a chance to use their new machine. That 
sounds childish, but it is none the less likely 
to be true. 

However that may be, the power, or the com- 
bination of powers in Germany and Austria, 
which sent the armies into the field and keeps 
them there, is the criminal guilty of the exist- 
ence of the bloody and unnecessary world war 
of the twentieth century. 

Understand I do not now profess to speak 
of the causes, of the conflicting national inter- 
ests, which lie behind this great conflict. They 
reach back to the capture of Constantinople by 
the Turks in 1453, and perhaps even farther. 
It is not to be supposed that in those multi- 
tudinous international disputes, differences and 
strifes, the right was all on the side of one na- 
tion, or of any one group of nations. Indeed 
the groups have formed and reformed them- 
selves so frequently, and with so many changes, 
that it is almost impossible to trace the heredity 
of great alliances today. 

But our point is this: Whatever may have 
been the condition of the international questions 
of Europe and of the so-called balance of power 
in 1914, there was absolutely no reason and no 
justification for choosing and forcing war as a 
method of attempting to settle those difficulties. 



10 THE WORLD PERIL 

Take the Austro-Servian quarrel, which was 
made the nominal root and origin of all the evil 
that has been brought upon us. An Austrian 
Archduke and his wife were assassinated on 
June 28, 1914, on a visit to the capital of the 
province of Bosnia. The assassins were Aus- 
trian subjects, of doubtful character. The 
Austrian Government despatched an ultimatum 
on July 23 accusing the Servian Government of 
complicity in this crime, and demanding by way 
of punishment conditions which would practi- 
cally destroy the independence of Servia as a 
nation. Forty-eight hours were given as the 
period in which this ultimatum must be abso- 
lutely accepted in all its terms. The Servian 
Government replied by practically accepting all 
of the terms but one, and by stating that it did 
not understand that term, and that it would be 
willing to refer the matter for peaceable solu- 
tion to the decision of the International Court 
at The Hague, or to the decision of the Great 
Powers who signed the Declaration of 1909. 
Now it is impossible to imagine either that 
Germany did not know the terms of the Aus- 
trian ultimatum before it was sent to Servia, 
or that she was ignorant of the tenor of Servia 's 
submissive and peaceful answer, or that she was 
unaware of the grave danger which would arise 
on the side of Russia if the independence of the 
Servian nation should be overridden by Austria. 

During this time the British Government 
made earnest efforts to avert the storm of war 
which Germany determined to let loose. It was 



AMERICAN EIGHTS 11 

proposed by the British Foreign Minister that 
the French, Italian and German Ambassadors 
should meet him in conference immediately, to 
discover an issue which would preserve peace. 
He also suggested that these four Powers, — two 
from the Triple Alliance and two from the En- 
tente, Germany and Italy, and Great Britain 
and France, — should mediate between Austria, 
Servia and Russia either at Vienna or at St. 
Petersburg. France and Italy on July 27 ac- 
cepted Great Britain's proposal for this confer- 
ence. On the same day the German Secretary 
of State refused it. Direct conversations were 
begun between Vienna and St. Petersburg. 
That afternoon the Kaiser, who had been yacht- 
ing at Kiel, returned to Potsdam! 

On the next day, July 28, Austria declared 
war on Servia, and on the following day Russia 
began to mobilize her armies in the districts 
bordering upon Servia and Austria. On this 
same day the late Czar of Russia telegraphed 
to the Emperor William as follows: "Thanks 
for your telegram, which is conciliatory and 
friendly, whereas the official message presented 
today by your Ambassador to my Minister was 
conveyed in a very different tone. I beg you 
to explain this divergency. It would be right 
to give over the Austro-Servian problem to The 
Hague Tribunal. I trust in your wisdom and 
friendship ' '. On July 30 the Austrians began 
to bombard Belgrade. On the 31st, in answer 
to a question from Great Britain, France prom- 
ised to respect the neutrality of Belgium ; — Ger- 



12 THE WORLD PERIL 

many refused to answer the question, and pre- 
sented an ultimatum to Russia and to France. 
On August 1 Germany declared war on Russia. 
On August 2 she violated the neutrality of Lux- 
emburg, entered the territory of France, and 
presented an ultimatum to Belgium demanding 
that she should betray her own neutrality. On 
August 3 Germany declared war on France. On 
August 4 Germany invaded Belgium, and Great 
Britain presented an ultimatum to Germany; 
on the 5th the British Ambassador left Berlin, 
and on the 6th the Prime Minister announced 
a state of war. 

There we have in outline the whole shameful 
story of Germany's betrayal of the peace of 
Europe. She refused every proposition of ar- 
bitration. She declined to have anything to do 
with a conference of the four Powers, in which 
a peaceful solution of the question between Aus- 
tria and Servia might have been obtained. She 
played fast and loose with her own promises, 
and made disgraceful propositions to Great 
Britain to betray her obligations to France, and 
to Belgium to allow herself to be shamefully 
used in an attack upon the flank of France. She 
drew the bloody sword apparently without hesi- 
tation and without remorse. She professed to 
be forced into a war of self-defence ; but she has 
never to this day been willing to state what it 
was that she was defending, or what was the 
cause for which she was determined to fight, 
but which she was not willing to submit to an 
impartial court of arbitration, or even to a con- 



AMERICAN RIGHTS 13 

ference of her sister nations. She wanted war, 
and she got it! 

Doubtless she had no dream of the full flood 
of blood and horror and grief which she was 
letting loose upon Europe. Doubtless she 
thought the war would be a short and compara- 
tively easy one. But even if in her pride she 
thought that, it was no excuse. If the war had 
only lasted three months, it would still have 
been a terrible crime. Now that it has lasted 
nearly three years it has become a gigantic sin 
against humanity, of which Germany must bear 
the guilt. We conscientious objectors make our 
first objection to the very existence of this war, 
and we propose to help our allies in pursuing 
the only way which now remains to end it, 
namely, to bring the German Government "to 
terms". 



II. We object also in the name of conscience 
to the manner in which Germany has conducted 
this war. It has been an astounding exhibition 
not only of disregard for solemn treaties, but 
also of contempt for the accepted rules of inter- 
national law and the plain instincts of human- 
ity. Begin where you like in the record. You 
will find that everywhere Germany has led the 
way. I do not say that she has been altogether 
alone in practices which are abhorrent, and 
from which we hoped that the common prin- 
ciples of civilization had delivered every bel- 
ligerent nation. But I do say, and I say it 



14 THE WORLD PEEIL 

without hesitation, after careful study, that in 
every case Germany has been the first to vio- 
late the rule of law and the instinct of human- 
ity. Take the unannounced dropping of aerial 
bombs on the sleeping city of Antwerp on 
August 24, 1914. It is true that Antwerp was 
a fortified city. But that fact did not cancel the 
rule of international law, that the bombardment 
of even a fortified city must be announced, in 
order that the lives of non-combatants may be 
spared. This shocking Zeppelin raid, however, 
which, from the course taken by the airship, 
was evidently carefully designed to destroy the 
palace in which the King and Queen of Belgium 
were sleeping with their children, and the hotels 
in which the members of the Belgian Cabinet 
were lodged, as a matter of fact succeeded only 
in destroying some sixty peaceful houses and 
injuring hundreds of others, and in killing by 
way of playful experiment scores of helpless 
women and children. It was the keynote of the 
horrors which were committed by the Germans 
after that in Belgium and elsewhere. Louvain 
and Dinant were burned, and hundreds of their 
people were massacred. Scores of old cities in 
Flanders and northern France were ruined 
without any military excuse. The cathedral of 
Rheims has been slowly and systematically re- 
duced to a ghastly ruin, for no reason other 
than the pure lust of destruction. The abomina- 
ble use of poison gas in warfare, with all the 
cruelty that it involves, was begun by the Ger- 
mans in the trenches before Ypres on April 22, 



AMERICAN RIGHTS 15 

1915. Summer resorts, peaceful villages and 
coast towns of England, whether fortified or not, 
were raided from the air. The laboring popula- 
tions of invaded Belgium and northern France 
were deported with circumstances of incredible 
brutality and taken to Germany, where they were 
made to work at tasks which were unquestion- 
ably hostile to their own countries. And the 
German submarines began their career of de- 
struction against peaceful ships of all nations, 
including the nations with whom they were in 
friendship, as well as those with whom they 
were at war. 

Try to understand the submarine. Germany 
claimed that it was such a wonderful, delicate 
and scientific instrument of destruction, that 
the old-accepted rule of international law, which 
obliged a naval commander before sinking a 
merchant ship to give warning and to make 
provision for the safety of the passengers and 
the crew, could not any longer be regarded as 
binding. The exquisite and triumphant sub- 
marine, fragile as it was, could not afford to 
take any such humane precautions. It must 
be allowed to sink any vessel that it chose to 
sink, and leave the people on board of it, men, 
women and children, to perish in the waves. 
This argument, if once admitted, would justify 
any assassin in killing anybody, provided the 
instrument with which he committed his crime 
was sufficiently delicate to be in danger of being 
broken in case of a conflict. 

The German idea of Kultur in war has culmi- 



16 THE WORLD PERIL 

nated in the practice of torpedoing hospital 
ships with wounded men and Eed Cross nurses 
on board, many of whom are necessarily lost. 
This is certainly the extreme limit of scientific 
barbarism. Taken in connection with the long 
list of preceding cruelties and atrocities it fully 
justifies the conscientious objectors in saying 
that they object with amazement and horror to 
Germany's conduct of this war, and that they 
propose, with the help of God, to put an end to 
it by whatever means are needful and possible. 



III. In the third place we conscientious ob- 
jectors in America object to the way in which 
the German Government has forced this war 
upon our peace-loving country. The record is 
a long list of shameless injuries and provoca- 
tions to the United States, borne with an ex- 
treme patience and forbearance, — yea, to the 
utmost limit of more than seventy times seven. 

While we were still at peace with the Ger- 
manic Powers they established a base system 
of espionage and an impudent propaganda in 
our country. These enjoyed the aid and com- 
fort of diplomatic representatives, whose very 
office bound them to honorable conduct. We 
sent the Austrian Ambassador home for pro- 
moting sedition and privy conspiracy here. 
The German Embassy continued his shameless 
work. Officials of that Embassy less clever than 
their chief, Count Bernstorff, were caught black- 
handed and sent home. Still German agents 



AMERICAN RIGHTS 17 

conspired against our neutrality and honor. 
They used our land to plot outrages in Canada. 
They set flame to our factories and our wharves. 
They made the German ships to which we had 
given asylum in our harbors an assassins ' cave, 
for the manufacture of bombs to be hidden in 
our own ships and in those of friendly nations. 
Filled with the madness of destruction, they 
cared not whom they maimed or slew. At last 
the German Government sent a secret message 
to Mexico, proposing an alliance in case of war, 
offering to give her two or three of our states 
as a reward, and even urging her to persuade 
Japan into that unholy league. Such is the rec- 
ord of the German Government and its agents 
on land, — a record of contempt, injustice and 
treachery toward our country. 

Now turn to the record on the sea. The story 
of the attack of the German submarines upon 
American interests, rights and lives, is one of 
the most shocking pages of human history. The 
Lusitania was torpedoed without warning on 
May 7, 1915. There were 114 American men, 
women and children on board who were thus 
murdered, — drowned without an effort of the 
submarine to help them, — "Butchered to make a 
German holiday ' '. The holiday was celebrated ; 
and I have one of the infamous medals which 
were struck in Germany to commemorate it. 

Within the next three months three indignant 
notes of protest and warning against this out- 
rage of law and humanity were sent to Ger- 
many. Her answer was to sink the Arabic, on 



18 THE WORLD PERIL 

August 19, and murder three more Americans. 
After this the correspondence dragged along 
until the attack on the Sussex, March, 1916. 
Then a practical ultimatum was sent by the 
President, warning Germany that diplomatic 
relations would be broken off, unless she aban- 
doned her illegal and inhuman submarine policy. 
She promised to abandon it. On January 31, 
1917, she withdrew that promise and announced 
that she would carry on an unrestricted sub- 
marine war, sinking merchant and passenger 
ships at sight. The President kept his word, 
and broke off relations. Promptly thereafter 
the Germans torpedoed eight American mer- 
chant vessels in succession, and murdered forty 
more Americans. 

The die was cast. Our country could no 
longer restrain her conscientious objections to 
the existence, the conduct and the animus of 
this war against freedom, justice and democ- 
racy. Germany compelled us either to take up 
arms to end it, or to submit to its threat against 
the world's liberties and our own life. 

We are in the war now, — in it with our con- 
science and our honor. Let us make ourselves 
count in it for all we are worth, — heart and head 
and hand, purse and property and prowess. We 
pledge our best aid to our brave Allies in order 
to get the war over as soon as possible. We will 
unite every counsel, every will, every effort to 
serve the good cause. We are resolved not to 
cease until the menace of an all-powerful, ruth- 
less, military autocracy shall perish from the 
face of the earth. 



CHAPTER II 
DEMOCRACY IMPERILLED 

Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker 

How ignorant of history is the world ! When, 
in the summer of 1914, the German Emperor 
violated the neutrality of Belgium, the world 
was surprised. When the German Chancellor 
defended his master by declaring that it was 
unreasonable to expect him to forgo his plans 
for an attack upon France because of a mere 
scrap of paper, the world was again surprised. 
It was with amazement and alarm that the world 
awoke to the dread realization that the Kaiser 
was making a deliberate assault upon the lib- 
erties of Europe, and that he had organized his 
empire for that purpose into a vast military 
machine. 

There was no reason for surprise at these 
things. In doing them William II was only be- 
ing true to the traditions of his house. In the 
breach of Belgian neutrality he had before him 
the example of ancestors whom he had always 
revered and imitated. In organizing his people 
into a great army for aggression upon his neigh- 
bors, he could find his precedent in almost every 
Hohenzollern from the Great Elector to his own 
grandfather, the Prince Cartridge of the Berlin 
Revolution of 1848. 

19 



20 THE WORLD PERIL 

In fact, the house which now rules in Germany 
has had a history of singular uniformity, of un- 
flagging adherence to certain fixed principles. 
William II is not different from William I, Will- 
iam I followed the policy of Frederick the Great, 
Frederick the Great was the reflection of the 
Great Elector. There are five cardinal points 
in the Hohenzollern policy: the raising and 
equipping of the largest military establishment 
that their subjects can possibly support, a diplo- 
macy characterized by Machiavellian duplicity 
and faithlessness, unswerving opposition to lib- 
eral government in any form, an appetite for 
territorial aggrandizement that can never be 
appeased, machinelike centralization and effi- 
ciency in civil affairs. 

If we may single out from these policies the 
one which has been the most consistently, the 
most religiously adhered to, it will be, perhaps, 
Hohenzollern treachery. Prince after prince, 
whether of his own initiative or from the advice 
of his ministers, has made and broken treaties 
with equal facility, has deceived friend and foe 
alike. In this respect there has been no truer 
representative of the house than Frederick 
William the Great Elector. Wakeman, in his 
" Europe 1598-1715," written many years be- 
fore the outbreak of the present war, thus de- 
scribes him: "Not one spark of generosity il- 
luminated his policy, not one grain of idealism 
colored his ambition, no sentiment of moral 
right ever interfered with his judgment, no fear 
of future retribution arrested his action. Mean 



DEMOCRACY 21 

minded, false and unscrupulous, he was the first 
sovereign to display the principles of seven- 
teenth century Machiavellianism, stripped of 
their cloak of Italian refinement, in all the hid- 
eous brutality of German coarseness/ ' 

Of a similar stripe was Frederick the Great. 
This monarch's wonderful genius and his plucky 
fight against tremendous odds have blinded 
many to the real meaning of his career. He 
was, as Macaulay has said, "a tyrant without 
fear, faith or mercy. ' ' His international policy 
was shaped solely by what he thought would 
benefit Prussia. He never hesitated to betray 
his allies in their hour of need and he held his 
own word as a matter of no moment, a thing 
serviceable only to deceive his friends and ene- 
mies alike, a thing to be broken without hesita- 
tion or compunction. Weaker nations, he de- 
clared, must give way before the stronger. They 
had no rights which need be respected because 
they had not the power to defend themselves. 

Frederick's treatment of Saxony in the Seven 
Years War affords so striking a parallel to the 
violation of Belgian neutrality in 1914 that it 
will be well to give a brief description of it. At 
the outbreak of hostilities in 1756, Frederick set 
his armies in motion ostensibly for the invasion 
of Bohemia. Just as Belgium was the easiest 
route into France for the hosts of William II, 
so Saxony, which lay directly between Branden- 
burg and Bohemia, afforded Frederick the short- 
est path to Prague. The King demanded of the 
Saxon Elector, Augustus III, permission for his 



22 THE WORLD PEEIL 

troops to pass through his domains, promising 
that they would observe exact order and disci- 
pline upon their march. Augustus, who was not 
built in the heroic mould of King Albert, gave 
a prompt assent. Whereupon Frederick moved 
into Saxony and took possession of it. 

The terrified Elector now learned that the 
Prussians intended not to pass through Saxony, 
but to seize it with the purpose of forcing him 
to become their ally in the war with Austria. 
"Saxony must share the same fortune and the 
same dangers as my own states, ' ' declared Fred- 
erick. "If I am fortunate, the Elector shall be 
amply compensated. I shall take charge of his 
interests as well as my own. As for what people 
will say, . . . his best excuse is that he is unable 
to do anything else." Augustus was told that 
he must either assist Frederick as an open ally 
or see his troops incorporated in the Prussian 
army, his revenues appropriated by the Prus- 
sian Government. * ' Good God, ' ' cried the Saxon 
envoy, "such a thing is without example in an- 
cient or modern history. ' ' " Do you think so ? ' ' 
was Frederick's sneering reply. "It seems to 
me there is a precedent, but if not, perhaps you 
know I flatter myself on being original." 

The Saxon army retreated to a strong camp 
at Pirna, and there was besieged by the Prus- 
sians. Despite the heroic efforts of the Aus- 
trians to rescue them, they were captured, and 
the private soldiers were compelled to enlist in 
Frederick's army. Saxony throughout the war 
was treated as a conquered province, and a 



DEMOCRACY 23 

crushing burden of taxation placed upon her 
helpless people. Leipsig alone was compelled 
to pay no less than 10,726,429 thalers. 

The invasion of Belgium shows that William 
II is no better and no worse than his great an- 
cestor, that he has in this the twentieth century 
learned to be nothing more than a Hohenzollern. 
Belgium stood in the way of his ambitions so 
he trampled her under his feet in just the same 
way that Frederick had trampled Saxony a cen- 
tury and a half before. And had Albert sub- 
mitted to the violation of his soil as Augustus 
had submitted, who can doubt that his fate 
would have been the same as that of the Elector ! 

This treacherous foreign policy has ever been 
accompanied by blatant militarism. The victims 
of Hohenzollern duplicity have only too often 
been powerless to secure redress because they 
could not match the overgrown Prussian army. 
The sharp command of the drill sergeant and 
the tramp of many regiments have resounded 
throughout Prussia since the days of the Great 
Elector. William II, with his huge fighting ma- 
chine which is today challenging the liberties of 
the world, is no greater advocate of militarism 
than was William I, or Frederick the Great, or 
Frederick William I. In fact Frederick William 
I, known in history as the Drill Sergeant, was 
the greatest military enthusiast of all time. This 
man had the same love for his regiments that 
the child has for his toy soldiers. He loved the 
fine uniforms of his grenadiers and their glisten- 
ing muskets; he loved to watch their perfect 



24 THE WORLD PERIL 

discipline as they wheeled and countermarched 
upon the parade ground. At his death he handed 
down to his son the great Frederick an army 
of 89,000 men, the most perfect in Europe. Can 
we wonder that the present Emperor, with such 
traditions in his family, should adhere to the 
military fetish? "I thank my army for all that 
it has accomplished for my House,' ' said Will- 
iam II in an address to the soldiers, "for its 
devotion and spirit of self-sacrifice, for its 
bravery and loyalty. . . . The new century sees 
our army — in other words, our people in arms — 
gathered around their standards, kneeling be- 
fore the Lord of Hosts. . . . And verily, if any- 
one has especial reason for bowing down before 
God, it is our army. A glance at our standards 
suffices for an explanation, for they are the em- 
bodiment of our history." "It is the soldier 
and the army," said he upon another occasion, 
"not Parliamentary majorities and votes, that 
have welded the German Empire together. My 
confidence rests upon the army." 

The Crown Prince, even more than his father, 
glories in militarism. "For him who has once 
ridden in a charge in peace," he writes, "there 
is nothing better except another ride ending in 
a clash with the foe. How often in the midst 
of a charge have I caught the yearning cry of 
a comrade, 'Donnerwetter, if it were only in 
earnest.' That is the cavalry spirit. Every 
true soldier must feel and know it." "We live 
today in a time which . . . indulges in foolish 
dreams of the possibility of a perpetual world 



DEMOCRACY 25 

peace," he says again. "This view of life is 
un-German and does not become us. A German 
who loves his nation . . . must not close his eyes 
to such reveries. . . . Just as lightning equalizes 
the tension in two differently charged strata of 
the air, so will the sword always be and remain 
till the end of the world the finally decisive 
factor." 

"It behooves us to have a sharp eye for, and 
to guard against half-heartedness in our mili- 
tary effort,' ' writes Baron von der Goltz, 
"against any adulteration or dilution of the 
warlike spirit and warlike passion, against 
diplomatic generals. . . . Let us be spared the 
false humanitarianism which would shrink from 
a desperate fight. . . . The warlike spirit must 
not be allowed to die out among the people, 
neither must the love of peace get the upper 
hand." 

But what makes the German army especially 
dangerous to the liberties of the world is that 
it controls, rather than is controlled by, the peo- 
ple. The power rests in the hands of a bureau- 
cracy of officials, who are not responsible to the 
Reichstag, but to the Kaiser alone. This bu- 
reaucracy is filled with Prussian nobles, popu- 
larly known as Junkers, who are passionately 
attached to the stern old repressive military 
spirit, and fanatically loyal to their monarch 
and war lord. "Prussia attained her great- 
ness," says Prince Billow, "as a country of 
soldiers and officials, and as such she was able 
to accomplish the work of German union; to 



26 THE WORLD PERIL 

this day she is still, in all essentials, a state of 
soldiers and officials." "Any one who has any 
familiarity at all with onr officers and generals, ' ' 
says another German writer, "knows that it 
would take another Sedan, inflicted on us in- 
stead of by us, before they would acquiesce in 
the control of the army by the German Parlia- 
ment/ ' 

The Cologne Gazette, in a recent issue, en- 
tered a vigorous protest against a proposal 
made by the Constitutional Committee of the 
Reichstag, that the unlimited control of the 
Kaiser over the army and navy be in some way 
curbed. After publishing a defence of Prussian 
military traditions together with the history of 
the relations between the Crown and the army, 
it says: "What is positively perilous is the 
effort ... to interfere with the position of the 
Supreme War Lord toward army and navy. 
The proposal to make the Imperial Chancellor 
or the Minister of War responsible for the nomi- 
nation of officers is an invasion of the rights of 
the Crown which we must characterize at once 
as unfounded, inappropriate and harmful, and 
which must be repudiated with the greatest de- 
termination in the interest of the corps of offi- 
cers, which is the backbone of our defence on 
sea and land. . . . Are we now, as if we had 
Jena and Auerstadt immediately behind us, sud- 
denly to cut the ties which unite the King of 
Prussia and German Kaiser with the corps of 
officers 1 Why should we do so ? Only because 
doctrinaire theorists wish so." 



DEMOCRACY 27 

Hand and hand with militarism has gone des- 
potism. The Hohenzollern house has always 
had an invincible antipathy to any form of pop- 
ular government. They have been patriotic in 
the sense that they have governed always effi- 
ciently, but they have fought fiercely against 
the growth of parliamentary power. From the 
days of the Great Elector, when the liberties of 
Brandenburg and East Prussia were ruthlessly 
crushed, to those of the present Kaiser, Prussia 
has been essentially a despotism. In 1813 and 
1814, when the Prussian people rose against the 
hosts of Napoleon and threw them across the 
Ehine, there was momentary hope that the old 
system would be overthrown. Frederick Will- 
iam III, in his hour of need, promised a consti- 
tution to his country. But when fear of Napoleon 
had passed, yielding to the pleading of the nobles 
and of the reactionary Metternich, he broke his 
word, and refused to make any concessions 
whatever. 

It is true that later, in 1850, Frederick William 
IV consented to the mockery of a constitution, 
but it in no way changed the character of the 
state. Prussia remains today what it has al- 
ways been — aristocratic and despotic. Although 
there is a parliament, the electoral system is so 
arranged that there is no chance for the poor 
to exert their proportionate influence, even in 
the lower or popular house. In 1900 the Social 
Democrats, although they polled a majority of 
the votes, secured only seven seats out of four 
hundred. The House of Lords is made up of 



28 THE WORLD PERIL 

hereditary members who represent rights of 
blood, life members who represent landed prop- 
erties and great institutions, and officials who 
represent the bureaucracy. This body, the very 
centre of reaction, is the King's creature, for he 
may appoint new members without limit. 

The German Empire, while it enjoys a more 
liberal constitution than Prussia, is also essen- 
tially autocratic. The Kaiser declares war with 
the consent of the Bundesrath, or Upper House 
of Parliament; he is the head of the army and 
navy; he appoints the Imperial Chancellor to 
whom the heads of the executive departments 
are responsible; he names the Prussian dele- 
gates to the Bundesrath. The Lower House or 
Reichstag plays but a subordinate part in the 
government. It neither makes nor unmakes 
ministries, it does not control the army, and 
while, in conjunction with the Upper House, it 
votes the appropriations, many of these are 
granted for long periods of years. The Bundes- 
rath is an assemblage of princes, for it repre- 
sents not the people of Germany, but the rulers 
of the states of which the Empire is composed. 

To Americans it seems incredible that a vast 
empire, an empire noted for its leadership in 
many intellectual fields, should at the beginning 
of the twentieth century cling to this illiberal 
system. When Germans display reverence and 
awe for their Kaiser, when they unsheathe their 
swords and vow to defend his throne and to ex- 
tend his power, there comes to us the picture of 
a Louis XIV or a Henry VIII, and we wonder 



DEMOCRACY 29 

why the Teutonic mind is still enslaved to prin- 
ciples long since cast off by other modern na- 
tions. We are apt to view the German with 
something like contempt and speak lightly of 
the time when he shall enjoy the freedom which 
is ours, when he shall cast aside the imperial 
trumpery and like a man take the government 
of his country into his own hands. 

Unfortunately it is no easy matter to effect 
reforms in Germany. Any change in the consti- 
tution of the Empire can be blocked by fourteen 
votes in the Bundesrath, or, as the Kaiser ap- 
points the seventeen Prussian delegates to that 
body, by what amounts to an imperial veto. 
That William II will never willingly permit the 
liberalization of the Empire his whole career 
bears witness. If the German liberals are to 
secure the boon of liberty, it must be done by 
revolution or by the aid of foreign arms. And 
revolution is most difficult because sentiment 
is by no means universally in favor of radical 
changes. There are millions of Germans who 
are convinced that their government is the best 
in the world, who would give their lives to de- 
fend the powers and privileges of their Kaiser. 
So far are they from repudiating the German 
system that they long to spread it to other lands. 
It is best that we should conquer, they say, that 
we may give to less fortunate neighbors the 
benefit of Kultur. 

"Germany, thanks to its genius for organiza- 
tion, has reached a stage of civilization higher 
than that of other peoples," says Professor 



30 THE WORLD PERIL 

Ostwald, a German of great prominence. * * War 
will make them share our higher civilization 
some day, under the form of this organization. 
Of our enemies . . . the French and the English 
have attained the degree of cultural develop- 
ment that we passed more than fifty years ago. 
This is the stage of individualism. But above 
this stage is the stage of organization. It is 
this stage that Germany has reached." 

"A man who is not a German can know noth- 
ing of Germany," said Professor Lasson, in a 
letter published in the Amsterdammer of Octo- 
ber 11, 1914. "We are morally and intellectu- 
ally superior to all; beyond comparison. The 
same is true of our organization and our insti- 
tutions. ' ' 

"Germany ought and desires to remain iso- 
lated,' ' wrote Professor von Leyden in the 
Frankfurter Zeitung. "The Germans are the 
most elevated people on earth. They will ac- 
complish their destiny which is to govern the 
world and to control other nations for the wel- 
fare of humanity.' ' 

These are not the words of isolated fanatics, 
but of leaders of German thought, and they 
represent the opinions of millions of the sober 
temperate people of Germany. To Englishmen 
and to Americans it seems incredible that any 
save a madman could hold such monstrous 
views, and they wonder how it was possible 
for them to become current among an intelligent 
people. The explanation is found in the control 
exerted over the educational system by the Gov- 



DEMOCRACY 31 

ernment. For decades the Prussian bureaucracy 
has made use of the institutions of learning for 
the unceasing preaching of despotism, militar- 
ism and aggressive nationalism. It is not too 
much to say that a large number of the uni- 
versities have become instruments for propa- 
gating ideals of government which accord with 
the wishes of the official caste. The nomination 
of professors for the universities lies practically 
in the hands of the Minister of Education, and 
this minister can and does exert pressure upon 
them to compel orthodoxy. With typical Ger- 
man docility a large part of the people have 
accepted their teaching, have learned to glory 
in despotism, have learned to regard all save 
Germans with contempt. 

In the task of retaining its hold upon the peo- 
ple the Government has one argument which has 
been hard for the liberals to answer — success. 
It constantly harps upon the benefits that have 
come to Prussia and to Germany from the 
Hohenzollern House ; military glory, prosperity, 
national unity. Against the pleas of the Social 
Democrats the Kaiser can point to the fruits 
of despotism. William II would have the Ger- 
man people revere William I as a demi-god. 
His references to the founder of the present 
Empire in an address in 1896 are so instructive 
that we quote at some length: "Had this ex- 
alted sovereign lived in the Middle Ages he 
would have been canonized and pilgrimages 
from all lands would have come to offer up 
prayers at his relics. God be thanked, it is 



32 THE WORLD PERIL 

even so today. The door of his mausoleum 
stands open; daily his faithful subjects fare 
thither, taking their children with them, and 
strangers come to rejoice at the sight of this 
glorious old hero and of his statues. 

"But we may be especially proud of this 
mighty man, since he was a son of the Mark. 
. . . The House of Hohenzollern and the Mark 
of Brandenburg are connected as though they 
were one. ... So long as the farmer of the 
Mark stands by us, so long as we can count upon 
the support and help of the Mark in our work, 
no Hohenzollern will despair of his task. . . . 
To this task the memory of Emperor William 
the Great calls me, and in fulfilling it we will 
rally around him, around his memory, as the 
Spaniards of old rallied around the Cid. This 
task, which is laid on the shoulders of all of us, 
and which by our fealty to Emperor William I 
we are bound to undertake, is the battle against 
revolution— a combat to be waged with every 
means at our command. That party which ven- 
tures to attack the foundations of the State, 
which revolts against religion, which does not 
even stop at the person of the most exalted sov- 
ereign of whom I have spoken — that party must 
be vanquished. I shall rejoice to know that the 
hand of any man is clasped in mine — be he 
workman, sovereign or gentleman — if only he 
helps me to this combat." 

Nor is this plea entirely unreasonable. Al- 
though the Hohenzollerns have given Germany 
little real liberty, they have given it a marvel- 



DEMOCRACY 33 

lous organization. They have always coupled 
their despotism with centralized efficiency which 
has been largely responsible for the rapid de- 
velopment and growth of their country. They 
have ruled always despotically, but well. 

Germany today resembles a well oiled piece 
of machinery, perfectly adjusted in all its parts. 
In the government there is little corruption, 
little misdirected energy, little bungling. There 
is no Pork Barrel, no waste of money, no muni- 
cipal scandals. As the Kaiser is the head of 
the administration there is the lack of the peri- 
odic change of national policy which is an in- 
herent weakness in more democratic countries. 
The Government guides and controls the na- 
tional energies, turns them from unproductive 
channels, points out the way to prosperity. 

It is this marvellous efficiency which has made 
possible Germany's rapid growth in population 
and in wealth since the foundation of the Empire 
in 1871. At the outbreak of the present war her 
people were numbered at 66,715,000 ; her imports 
valued at $2,500,000,000; her exports $2,131,- 
000,000; her wealth $80,000,000,000. German 
manufactured goods were competing vigorously 
and successfully for the world's markets. It 
was but a few days ago that the British Empire 
Productions Association, at a luncheon in Lon- 
don, discovered that they were eating from Ger- 
man made plates, and vented their vexation by 
hurling them to the floor. 

And it is this very efficiency which makes 
Germany so great a menace to the world. This 



34 THE WORLD PERIL 

machine, this mechanism of industry and wealth 
and men, wonderfully organized and centrally 
controlled, constitutes the most powerful crea- 
tion of all time. The successes of the Germans 
in the present war, their march through Serbia, 
their conquest of Poland, the superiority they 
have shown over more numerous enemies are 
due not entirely, in fact not chiefly, to the per- 
fection of their armies, but to the organization 
of the nation behind them. The army is but 
the weapon with which blows are struck, the 
nation is the man who wields the weapon. In 
other words, we have the alarming spectacle of 
a vast empire organized in its every detail for 
aggression upon its neighbors. 

The power which has come to the Hohenzol- 
lerns through the perfection of their armies and 
the organization of their resources has been 
used ruthlessly for territorial aggrandizement. 
When Bismarck was trying to persuade William 
I to annex to Prussia the duchies of Schleswig 
and Holstein, he succeeded by reminding him 
"that each of his immediate predecessors had 
won an addition to the Monarchy. ' 1 

At the beginning of the seventeenth century 
the Hohenzollerns were petty princes, ruling 
over Brandenburg in the north of Germany; 
today they are the Kings of Prussia, which has 
engulfed more than half the Teutonic territory 
and extends in one vast sweep from the Memel 
to the Rhine; they are German Emperors, and 
as such rule from Denmark to the Alps ; by con- 
quest in the present war they control territory 
from Lille to Kovel. 



DEMOCRACY 35 

The growth of Hohenzollern territory has 
been steady and rapid. In 1600 the House ruled 
over dominions aggregating about 40,000 square 
kilometres. Before the middle of the seven- 
teenth century this had been nearly tripled, and 
amounted, at the death of the Great Elector, to 
110,840 kilometres. Frederick the Great re- 
ceived from his father 118,000 kilometres and 
handed down to his successors 195,000 kilo- 
metres. Frederick William II, thanks to his 
participation in the partition of Poland, in- 
creased the Prussian territory to 300,000 kilo- 
metres. There was some loss of territory under 
the adjustments of the Napoleonic period and 
the Congress of Vienna, but they were more 
than compensated for by the acquisitions of 
1866, when Prussia expanded until it embraced 
an area of 348,000 square kilometres. The North 
German Confederation which was formed in the 
same year and placed under the Prussian Kings 
brought the total Hohenzollern territory to 415,- 
000 kilometres. Finally, in 1871, the formation 
of the German Empire and the seizure of Alsace- 
Lorraine made the Kaiser the ruler over no less 
than 540,496 square kilometres. In three hun- 
dred years the Hohenzollern domains have in- 
creased more than thirteen fold. 

As we reflect upon this story of constant ex- 
pansion at the expense of weaker neighbors, we 
ask ourselves in alarm where the thing is to end. 
What is the ambition of the present Hohenzol- 
lerns and the men who surround them? Until 
the outbreak of the present war this expansion 



36 THE WORLD PERIL 

had been carried on chiefly at the expense of 
other German states. It has hitherto been ex- 
cused by the plea that it was necessary in order 
to cement German union. But now that the 
Empire is a fait accompli, can it be that the 
Hohenzollerns desire territorial growth at the 
expense of non-Teutonic peoples I Is it possible 
that they wish to restore the Holy Roman Em- 
pire and plant their heels upon the neck of van- 
quished nations? 

Germany's hostile intention against the world 
can no longer be doubted, for it is evidenced 
by the writings of a host of her most prominent 
citizens; officials, professors, generals, and so 
forth. "We must not forget the civilizing duty 
which devolves upon us by the decrees of provi- 
dence,' ' writes General von Clausewitz. "As 
Prussia has been made by fate the nucleus of 
Germany, so Germany will be the regenerating 
nucleus of the future empire of the West. . . . 
And in order that no one shall be ignorant of it, 
we proclaim now, that our continental nation 
has a right to the sea, not only the North Sea, 
but also the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. 
We will absorb then, one after another, all the 
provinces which border upon Prussia; we will 
annex successively Denmark, Holland, Belgium, 
Franche-Comte, North Switzerland, Livonia, 
then Trieste and Venice; finally the northern 
region of France, from the Somme to the 
Loire.' ' 

Referring to this scheme of aggrandizement 
as outlined by General von Clausewitz, General 



DEMOCRACY 37 

von Schellendorf, a former Prussian Minister of 
War, says : ' ' This program which we now give 
out without fear is the work of no fool; this 
empire which we wish to establish will be no 
dream; we have now in our hands the means 
for its realization. ' ' 

In June, 1917, the principal speaker at a 
reactionary meeting in Germany advocated the 
seizure of all the vast region of Lithuania and 
Courland, the expulsion of many of the inhab- 
itants and its settlement by 2,000,000 German 
speaking Russians from the interior of the 
Slavic dominions. This he felt would weaken 
Russia permanently, would establish a complete 
bulwark of dependent states east of Germany 
and Austria-Hungary, and would widen German 
influence and civilization. 

At the moment of writing comes the report 
that the reactionists are circulating among the 
troops a pamphlet entitled "Germany's Position 
under Good and Bad Peace. ' ' Among other fea- 
tures of this publication are maps showing Ger- 
many covering or controlling nearly three- 
fourths of all Europe. It is actually suggested 
that France be annexed to the German Empire 
as a dependent state. An alternative proposi- 
tion is the acquisition of a strip of territory to 
connect Germany with the Mediterranean. The 
pamphlet also pleads for the formation of a 
German customs union to include the Scandi- 
navian countries, for the expulsion of Great 
Britain from the Mediterranean, the acquisition 
by Germany of Cape Verde, the Azores and 



38 THE WORLD PERIL 

other islands, the reduction of Poland, Cour- 
land, Finland, the Baltic provinces and large 
stretches of Russia proper to the status of sub- 
ject states. 

"You ask what Germany desires V 9 says Pro- 
fessor Ostwald. "Well, Germany wishes to or- 
ganize Europe, for Europe so far is unorgan- 
ized. Germany wishes to enter upon a new path 
in order to realize the idea of collective work. 
How does Germany propose to realize her pro- 
ject of organizing the West? She will demand 
that both Germans and French be made wel- 
come into each of those countries, that they be 
permitted to work and to acquire property upon 
the same conditions as the citizens of each coun- 
try; in the East Germany will create a confed- 
eration of states, a kind of Baltic League, which 
will embrace the Scandinavian countries, Fin- 
land and the Baltic provinces. Finally, Poland 
is to be torn from Russia and be made into an 
independent state. I believe the moment has 
come for the revising of the map of Europe. ' ' 

General von Bernhardi, in his famous book, 
"Germany and the Next War," says, "We must 
arouse in our people the unanimous wish for 
power together with the determination to sacri- 
fice on the altar of patriotism, not only life and 
property, but also private views and preferences 
in the interest of the common welfare. Then 
alone shall we discharge our great duties of the 
future, grow into a world Power, and stamp a 
great part of humanity with the impress of the 
German spirit. ... In one way or another we 



DEMOCRACY 39 

must square our account with France, if we wish 
for a free hand in our international policy. . . . 
France must be so completely crushed that she 
can never again come across our path." 

To what extent the German nation has sub- 
scribed to these extreme schemes of conquest it 
is not possible to say. It is improbable that 
either the average citizen or the Imperial Gov- 
ernment entered the present war with the defi- 
nite program of a confederated Europe under 
German leadership. That many hundred thou- 
sands believe that this is the eventual "manifest 
destiny" of the Teuton race, none can gainsay. 

It every day becomes more evident, however, 
that the Kaiser and his advisers did have as 
their chief purpose in precipitating war the 
establishment of the long dreamed of Mittel- 
europa. More than two decades ago there was 
established a society known as the Pan-Germanic 
Union, whose avowed purpose it was to bring 
into the Empire all German speaking peoples. 
* ' The German Empire is incomplete, ' ' they said ; 
"beyond the imperial frontiers are twenty-one 
million Teutons, two million in Switzerland, ten 
million in Austria-Hungary, one million in Rus- 
sia, and eight million Netherlanders in Belgium 
and Holland. The problem consists in establish- 
ing complete identity between the linguistic ter- 
ritory and the political territory ; then only will 
Germany attain her natural frontiers." 

This society, which numbers among its mem- 
bers many of the most prominent men of the 
Empire, has been laboring unceasingly to con- 



40 THE WORLD PERIL 

vert the people of Germany to their views. 
Agents have been scattered far and near to 
preach the doctrine of Pan-Germanism, money 
has been spent freely, professors have taught 
it in the universities, newspapers have conse- 
crated themselves to it. That this propaganda, 
if accepted as their own by the German nation, 
would lead inevitably to a great European up- 
heaval did not deter them. " It is then necessary 
before all to convince ourselves, ' ' declared Gen- 
eral von der Goltz, "and to convince the genera- 
tion whose education we must shape, that the 
moment for repose has not come, that the pre- 
diction of a supreme struggle, having as its stake 
the existence and grandeur of Germany, is by no 
means a vain dream, the creation of the imagina- 
tion of a few ambitious fools, that this supreme 
struggle will break forth some day inevitable, 
terrible. ' ' 

With time the Pan-Germanist program grew. 
Out of the movement for a union of German 
speaking peoples developed a vast scheme of 
unprecedented expansion. It was proposed that 
Germany should annex or control all of central 
Europe, including Belgium, Holland, northern 
France, Poland and the Baltic provinces; the 
whole of the Turkish Empire ; and a connecting 
strip of territory through the Balkans. The 
new Germany was to stretch in one mighty 
sweep from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf. 
Europe was to be split with an iron wedge, and 
a direct path opened for German organization 
and for German armies into the heart of Asia. 



DEMOCRACY 41 

The entire plan was set forth in 1911 by Otto 
Richard Tannenberg in his work, "Gross- 
deutschland, die Arbeit des 20ten Jahrhund- 
erts." 

Although the Kaiser and the gronp of men 
who snrronnd him have not accepted openly 
this scheme of aggression, William has en- 
couraged the Pan-Germanist movement in 
every way, allowing their agents to work 
freely among the people, receiving their lead- 
ers into royal favor. More significant is the 
fact, now for the first time dawning upon the 
consciousness of the world, that the imperial 
policies have for years shaped themselves in 
conformity with the greater part of the Pan- 
Germanist scheme. What other interpretation 
could be placed upon the Kaiser's activities in 
the Orient, his visit to the Sultan, the Bagdad 
Railway concession, the Germanizing of the 
Turkish army? The Kaiser's famous utterance 
at Damascus in 1898, when he assured "the 
Sultan as well as the three hundred millions of 
Musselmans who venerate him as their Khalifa ' ' 
that the German Emperor was their friend for- 
ever, takes on a new meaning in the light of 
recent events. Nor can there be any doubt that 
the immediate occasion of the present great war 
was the blocking of the way to the East by the 
Treaty of Bucharest which followed the Balkan 
wars. With this treaty the crushing of Serbia 
became a necessity to Germany, because Serbia 
was a link in the great chain which was being 
forged to connect Hamburg and Koweit. 



42 THE WORLD PERIL 

More convincing still is the fact that the war 
has made the Pan-Germanist scheme a fait ac- 
compli. The thing is done. "Let us make no 
mistake,' ' says M. Cheradame, "Austria-Hun- 
gary is actually as much under the domination 
of William II as is Belgium. The European 
conflict has enabled Germany artfully to occupy 
the Empire of the Hapsburgs under the pre- 
tence of defending it. Since the beginning of 
1915 all the troops of Francis Joseph have been 
entirely under the orders of the Berlin General 
Staff. Even if Austria-Hungary wished to make 
a separate peace she could not do so, for all her 
motive power, diplomatic and military, is ex- 
clusively controlled by the Kaiser 's agents. ' ' 

The conquest of Serbia, Montenegro and parts 
of Albania, and Rumania, together with the 
domination of Bulgaria have made real the sec- 
ond step of the vast scheme; the Germanizing 
of Turkey has accomplished the third. Ger- 
many's control over the Sultan's domains is 
almost as great as over Austria-Hungary. Not 
only has the economic life of Turkey fallen 
under the influence of German industrial organ- 
izers and its army under the control of German 
officers, but a large delegation of German pro- 
fessors has been sent to Constantinople as 
apostles of German Kultur. 

The American citizen with his love of peace 
is inclined to ask why the Germans wished to 
enter upon this vast scheme of aggression and 
conquest; why they were not content to enjoy 
in quiet the prosperity which their industry had 



DEMOCRACY 43 

won, how they could justify themselves in plung- 
ing the world into the most frightful struggle 
of all time. General von Bernhardi gives a 
partial explanation. ' ' Germany supports today 
65,000,000 inhabitants on an area about equal 
the size of France,' ' he writes, " while only 40,- 
000,000 live in France. Germany's enormous 
population increases annually by about 1,000,- 
000. There is no question, agriculture and in- 
dustry of the home country cannot give perma- 
nently sufficient employment to such a steadily 
increasing mass of human beings. . . . Parti- 
tioned as the surface of the globe is among 
nations at the present time, territorial acquisi- 
tions we can only realize at the cost of other 
states . . . and such results are possible only 
if we succeed in securing our power in the centre 
of Europe better than hitherto. ' ' Again he says, 
"It is impossible to change the partition of the 
earth as it now exists in our favor by diplomatic 
artifices. If we wish to gain the position in the 
world that is due to us, we must rely on our 
sword, renounce all weakly visions of fear, and 
eye the dangers surrounding us with resolute 
and unflinching courage. ' ' 

This gospel is a simple one. Since Germany 
has not all that she desires or that she considers 
necessary for her development, and since she 
can get it only by robbing her neighbors, she is 
quite justified in launching an attack upon them. 
That other nations have need for their own ter- 
ritory does not matter. "I am hungry," she 
says, "surely you cannot blame me if I knock 



44 THE WORLD PERIL 

you over the head and eat you." Her crude 
appeal to force she justifies by the law of the 
survival of the fittest. She laughs at interna- 
tional law, and brushes it aside as the foible 
of petty minds. ' * A state cannot commit crime, ' ' 
says Professor Lasson; "to observe treaties is 
not a question of law, it is a question of interest. 
... He who has power can create new condi- 
tions which will be as much law as those which 
precede it. In spite of all treaties the feeble 
are the prey of the stronger. . . . Between 
neighboring states . . . the case can be settled 
only by material force. . . . The feeble flatter 
themselves that the treaties which assure their 
miserable existence are inviolable. But war 
shows them that a treaty can be untrustworthy, 
that conditions have changed. There is only 
one guarantee: a sufficient military force." 
"Only cranks trust in international conven- 
tions," said Professor Busch at a recent Pan- 
German meeting, "and, as for disarmament 
treaties, they are not worth the paper they are 
written on." 

What shall the answer be? The Kaiser and 
his people have presented their case to the world 
in an unmistakable manner — with the points of 
millions of bayonets, with the roar of thousands 
of guns. If the world reproaches them for their 
ruthless aggression, they reply with steel; if 
Belgium bemoans her hard fate, their reply is 
steel; if France points to her bleeding breast, 
their reply is steel; if America holds them re- 
sponsible for her murdered women and children. 



DEMOCRACY 45 

they reply still with steel. It is a difficult argu- 
ment to answer; in fact it can be answered in 
but one way — with steel. 

The world is slow to awaken to its peril. It 
was so content to go peaceably on its way, de- 
voting its energies to things that make for hap- 
piness and plenty. It looked back with pity 
upon the struggles of other ages and congratu- 
lated itself that the enlightenment of the twen- 
tieth century would protect it from the horrors 
of war. It cannot even today realize that it is 
terribly necessary to bestir itself, to throw aside 
all hesitancy, to arm to the teeth in order to 
preserve all that it holds dearest, that it is neces- 
sary for her to use the argument of steel. 

But there are millions of Americans who are 
wondering how all this concerns us. They can- 
not understand why we should be dragged into 
what they term a European squabble. Why 
should we care if the Kaiser does secure his 
Mitteleuropa and extend his power to the Per- 
sian Gulf? Why should we send our youth to 
slaughter in order to help the English and 
French conquer their enemies ? They think that 
the submarine warfare alone has forced us into 
war and wonder whether the President might 
not have found some way to preserve longer our 
strained neutrality. 

In fact our stake in the war is the same as 
that of our European allies; the preservation 
of our democracy, the defence of our liberties 
and our homes. Should the Germans be suc- 
cessful in this war the balance of power in 



46 THE WORLD PERIL 

Europe will be overthrown. There would be 
no nation, no group of nations that could with- 
stand the terrible might of the Kaiser. It would 
be a new European Empire, it would be Charle- 
magne returned to earth. 

It requires no great insight to perceive that 
the safety of the American continents depends 
upon a division of power in Europe. Were all 
the millions of men, all the vast wealth, all the 
resources of Europe controlled by one govern- 
ment, we would be almost helpless before it. 
The day would not long be delayed when it would 
stretch forth its mighty hand across the Atlantic 
for a share in the riches of the West. Already 
the Kaiser has cast longing eyes at the Amer- 
icas, and has sent to them hundreds of thou- 
sands of Teutonic settlers, as the vanguard of 
what may some day be a conquering host. 

It is well for us to recall the dangers which 
threatened our country from the overgrown 
power of Napoleon Bonaparte. When Napoleon 
became First Consul of France the vast Louis- 
iana territory bordered upon our western fron- 
tier, with the Mississippi the dividing line. 
When our independence was acknowledged this 
territory was in the hands of the decadent and 
unprogressive monarchy of Spain, from whom 
we had nothing to fear. Except for the extreme 
southern section, Louisiana was unsettled and 
it was unlikely that it would be settled for many 
decades. The possibility of the building up of 
a strong rival nation and the blocking forever of 
our westward expansion seemed remote. 



DEMOCRACY 47 

But when Napoleon, in 1799, took Louisiana 
from the helpless Spaniards with the design of 
founding a new French empire in America, we 
were filled with the greatest alarm. "The day 
that France takes possession of New Orleans," 
declared President Jefferson, "... seals the 
union of two nations who in conjunction can 
maintain exclusive possession of the ocean. 
From that moment we must marry ourselves 
to the British fleet and nation." The renewal 
of the European war forced Napoleon to sell 
Louisiana to the United States, but there can 
be little doubt that he would have turned his 
attention once more to America after his con- 
quest of western Europe, had not the way been 
barred to him by the ever victorious British 
fleet. 

It cannot be too strongly impressed upon the 
people of the United States that their safety 
would be seriously jeopardized were Germany 
to emerge from the war undefeated. Were hos- 
tilities to end today upon the status quo, or even 
upon the basis of no indemnities and no an- 
nexations, the Kaiser's domination of Europe 
would be almost undisputed. If France, Eng- 
land, Russia, Italy have been incapable of curb- 
ing the military might of Germany in the 
present war, what conceivable combination of 
Powers can accomplish the task in the next? 
A truce of a few years is all that Germany 
would require to organize herself and her allies 
into an invincible fighting machine. General 
von Bernhardi was quite correct when he wrote, 



48 THE WORLD PERIL 

"Our opponents can only attain their political 
aims by almost annihilating us by land and by 
sea. If the victory is only half won, they would 
have to expect continuous renewals of the con- 
test, which would be contrary to their interests. ' ' 
The United States has as much at stake in 
maintaining a divided Europe as France for- 
merly had in preventing the uniting of Ger- 
many. For centuries the French rulers had 
little to fear from their neighbors across the 
Rhine, because they were disunited, weak and 
bitterly hostile to each other. In 1866, Napoleon 
III held his armies inert while Bismarck de- 
feated the Austro-Hungarians and their allies, 
and brought about the union of all north Ger- 
many. His folly resulted not only in the crush- 
ing of France four years later by the German 
military machine and the collapse of his own 
imperial government, but in creating such a 
permanent menace to the very existence of 
France that she has lived ever since in the 
shadow of impending disaster. France today 
is paying for the folly of her Emperor with the 
lives of hundreds of thousands of her sons, with 
billions of francs, with untold bitterness and 
suffering. The people of the United States 
would be equally foolish were they not to strike 
with all their might at the Teutonic military 
power which threatens now to overwhelm 
Europe. If we fail in the present war, if Ger- 
many emerges with her military machine in 
working order, our sons will pay dearly for 
our failure. 



DEMOCRACY 49 

But, many are asking, is not the danger as 
great from England as from Germany? Will 
we not, by striking down the Teutonic peril, 
help create an irresistible Britain? Is the men- 
ace of the Kaiser 's army greater than that of 
England's navy? Such fears are without foun- 
dation. There is no reason to suppose that 
Great Britain will emerge from this struggle 
stronger than when she entered it. It is possi- 
ble that she may retain some of the conquered 
German colonies, but these can add little to her 
power. Upon the continent of Europe she will 
secure not one foot of territory, and her might 
will still be balanced by that of Germany, 
France, Russia, Italy. 

Moreover, Great Britain, like ourselves, is a 
democratic nation, a nation whose rulers are the 
representatives and servants of the people. She 
is the very antithesis of the military despotism 
of Germany. There is no fear that the British 
people will ever arm themselves to the teeth as 
the rulers of Germany have armed the German 
people, for an assault upon the liberties of the 
world. Can there be dread of a country the 
peace strength of whose army is only 138,497 
men, and who was forced to create its effective 
fighting force of the present war after hostil- 
ities had begun? It is true that Great Britain 
has for centuries maintained the greatest navy 
of the world, but this has been necessary in 
order to assure the integrity of her empire and 
her own existence. It must be remembered that 
a navy is primarily a defensive weapon in that 



50 THE WOELD PERIL 

it cannot be used for purposes of extensive con- 
quest unless accompanied by an effective army. 
The British navy has been for us far more of 
a protection than a menace. It was the control 
of the seas by the British that made possible 
the independence of the Latin American states, 
for our Monroe Doctrine would have been of 
little avail against the reactionary continental 
powers which wished to aid Spain in subduing 
her rebellious colonies, had not Canning refused 
them passage for their armies. Nor would we 
have been allowed to acquire Porto Rico, Guam 
and the Philippines in 1898, had not the British 
navy been ready to oppose any hostile league 
of European Powers. 

No, the menace is from Germany, not from 
Great Britain. It is Germany that " stands in 
shining armor in the midst of Europe" and 
defies the power and derides the laws of the 
world. It is against Germany that the outraged 
peoples have been compelled to arm to protect 
all that they hold best and dearest. The strug- 
gle has become a world crusade, a crusade 
against a nation infidel to justice, to interna- 
tional law, to treaties, to all save its own selfish 
ends. 

There can be but one of two outcomes to the 
world's quarrel with Germany: either the world 
must crush the German system, or succumb be- 
fore it. Just as it was impossible for the United 
States before our Civil War to remain perma- 
nently divided against itself, as it inevitably had 
to become all slave or all free, so the world to- 



DEMOCRACY 51 

day cannot remain divided against itself, it nmst 
become all Prussian or all democratic. There 
can be no compromise in the present struggle, 
no half victory. If we do not crush to the 
ground the hosts of despotism they will eventu- 
ally overwhelm us. We will not, we cannot re- 
linquish the struggle until the goal has been 
reached, until militarism has been rebuked, until 
international law has been vindicated. 

When once this end has been accomplished, 
when the sword has been struck from the 
Kaiser's hand, steps must be taken to make im- 
possible the recurrence of the present frightful 
calamity. "The world must be made safe for 
democracy. ' ' But how, it may be asked, is this 
to be accomplished? Is Germany to be disinte- 
grated? Is Prussia to be reduced to her ancient 
bounds? Are the south German states to be 
made independent? Is France to secure all ter- 
ritory as far as the Rhine? Such radical steps 
would be unwise and unnecessary. Our Presi- 
dent has declared that we have no quarrel with 
the German people; we would not be justified 
in destroying the German nation. Our foe, the 
foe of the world, is Prussian military autocracy, 
and this alone must be destroyed. But this must 
be destroyed utterly, for if it be merely curbed, 
it will arise again and again to menace the lib- 
erty of the world. The world must be made 
safe for democracy by democracy. 

At the Congress of Vienna, when the vic- 
torious allies were quarrelling over the spoils 
of Europe, which they had just torn from Napo- 



52 THE WORLD PERIL 

leon Bonaparte, the delegates of the little Re- 
public of Genoa eame to plead for recognition 
for their state. " Republics are no longer fash- 
ionable, ' ' they were told by the Czar, and their 
territory was handed over to the King of Sar- 
dinia. Things have changed since that day. A 
glance at the map of the world of 1815 shows 
that there was then but one real republic in 
existence — the United States. Now all save one- 
thirtieth of the territory of the world is occupied 
by democratic nations or their dependencies. 
Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, some of 
the Balkan states are almost the sole survivors 
of the autocratic spirit of past ages. Since the 
Revolution in Russia and the entrance of the 
United States into the war, the struggle has 
assumed openly a character which it bore in 
spirit from the first, a battle of democracy with 
despotism. And when the war is over, when 
the conference is held for the reconstruction of 
the world, Alexander's words will be turned 
against the Kaiser and he will be told that it is 
despotism which is now not fashionable. 



CHAPTER III 
INTERNATIONAL LAW IMPERILLED 

By Edward S. Cor win 

The greatest of German jurists defines rights 
as interests which society undertakes to protect, 
not merely for the benefit of the bearers of such 
rights, but — and primarily — for its own benefit. 
It follows that the individual who asserts his 
rights to the extent of his ability performs 
thereby a social service; and so in fact Von 
Ihering argues. " Every man," he declares, 
"is the champion of the law in the interest of 
society. ' ' 

What then is the duty of a state whose rights 
under international law have been trampled 
upon by another state ? Clearly, to seek repara- 
tion from the transgressor. For as it is the 
object of municipal law to "secure the condi- 
tions requisite for social life, ' ' so it is the object 
of international law to secure the conditions 
which are requisite for the life of the civilized 
states of the world in community with one an- 
other. Where therefore international law as- 
sures certain rights to the individual members 
of the family of nations, its doing so may be 
taken as representing the verdict of mankind 
that the rights in question comprise essential 

53 



54 THE WORLD PEEIL 

conditions of the life of nations in association 
with one another, and that the relation of the 
individual members of the family of nations to 
such rights is to be regarded as one of obliga- 
tion as well as of privilege. Furthermore, the 
majority of men will hardly deny that the meet- 
ing of this obligation must in certain circum- 
stances involve a resort to force. Accustomed 
to evaluate force as legitimate or illegitimate 
according to its employment, they will scarcely 
challenge the self-evident fact that a society in 
which force was always more readily enlisted 
against the law than in its behalf must eventu- 
ally disintegrate. 

There is just one circumstance which may 
validly operate toward relieving a state from 
the duty otherwise incumbent upon it to vindi- 
cate its affronted rights under international 
law, and that is the likelihood of incurring over- 
whelming calamity if it undertook the discharge 
of this duty. It is for this reason that in the 
present war those who are banded together in 
the effort to bring Germany to bar have over- 
looked the laches of the small states neighboring 
on Germany whose rights the latter has so sys- 
tematically violated, since it is appreciated that 
for Switzerland, Holland or the Scandinavian 
states to assert themselves against Germany in 
defence of their rights would be to invite the 
fate that has already overwhelmed Belgium, 
Serbia and Rumania. But to risk ruin is one 
thing, to incur grave inconvenience quite an- 
other; and the state which would forgo its 



INTERNATIONAL LAW 55 

rights merely in order to avoid the immediate 
annoyance and expense of asserting them would 
only expose itself to fresh aggressions which 
must in the end become unbearable. 

The entrance of the United States into the 
war against Germany was a duty which it owed 
itself both in its character of custodian of the 
rights of its people and in that of a member 
of the family of nations. Under the rules of 
international law the people of the United 
States, so long as they remained neutral, had 
the right to venture their lives and their goods 
upon the high seas subject to certain risks. By 
her methods of submarine warfare Germany has 
enhanced these risks intolerably, and with re- 
sultant loss of American lives. In the first 
place, for the belligerent right of capture at 
sea she has invariably substituted the practice 
of outright destruction. In the second place, 
from the procedure of capture she has elimi- 
nated the essential steps of visit and search, 
with the result that destruction is carried out 
with little or no warning to the victims. In the 
third place, for the duty of the captor to put 
those on board the captured vessel into a safe 
place before destroying it, she has substituted 
"the poor measure of safety" of entrusting 
them to the mercy of wind and wave in small 
boats many miles from land — when, indeed, her 
commanders have not murderously assailed 
them with shot and shell. Then to these gross 
infractions of the law of nations Germany has 
added, in the case of the United States, an 



56 THE WORLD PERIL 

equally gross violation of a specific pledge. At 
the time of the controversy over the sinking of 
the Sussex, the German Government, after hav- 
ing forwarded our Government an explanation 
of this occurrence which for sheer hardihood of 
prevarication is unsurpassed in the annals of 
diplomacy, gave its word that thenceforth mer- 
chantmen carrying American citizens would 
be sunk by its vessels only after warning. This 
undertaking, which indeed contained an intima- 
tion of its temporary character, was probably 
instigated by the fact that up to this time sub- 
marine warfare had not proved a success and 
that most of the submarines of the original pat- 
tern had been destroyed by the British navy. 
By the beginning of the current year, however, 
Germany had a new stock of subsea vessels on 
hand of a much larger type. So, confident of 
being able to end the war by the use of the im- 
proved weapon before the United States could 
become an effective enemy, the German Imperial 
Government, on January 31, 1917, bluntly in- 
formed our Government that it proposed to 
renew unrestricted submarine warfare on the 
following day. This time at any rate it was as 
good as its word, and on February 1 began the 
course of events which compelled our Govern- 
ment to determine definitely whether to submit 
to injury capped by insult or to join the league 
against the Ishmael among nations. 

At this point it will be advantageous to antici- 
pate an objection, the consideration of which 
will bring us to the threshold of the principal 



INTERNATIONAL LAW 57 

topic of this chapter. I refer to the argument 
which has appeared in certain quarters that, 
while Germany undoubtedly infringed upon our 
rights as neutrals, Great Britain by her em- 
bargo upon neutral trade with Germany did the 
same thing, and that, accordingly, it was not 
the vindication of our rights at international 
law which really determined our entrance into 
the war. The argument conveniently ignores 
a material fact, namely, that Germany's viola- 
tions of our rights were of a vastly more serious 
nature than Great Britain's and so required 
from our Government a corresponding urgency 
in meeting them. This may be ascertained by 
putting the following question: What was the 
menace held out respectively by the British em- 
bargo and by German submarine warfare to 
American rights in case they were asserted in 
defiance of these measures? The answer is ob- 
vious. The menace held out by the British em- 
bargo was, at worst, the seizure of American 
property on the high seas and its indefinite de- 
tention in British waters — therefore, property 
loss. The menace held out by German sub- 
marine warfare, especially after it entered upon 
its final stage on February 1, 1917, was the out- 
right destruction, without an instant 's warning, 
of American lives as well as of American prop- 
erty on the high seas. But it may be argued, 
along the line taken by the recent Austrian note 
to our Government, that the destruction wrought 
by German submarines is not an unwarned de- 
struction, that indeed the warning is given 



58 THE WORLD PEEIL 

even before American property or American 
lives leave their home ports. In other words, 
we are warned not to try to exercise our rights 
on the high seas thenceforth. Naturally, our 
Government has not given any heed to such 
warnings. It has proceeded on the assumption 
that American citizens would continue to assert 
their rights on the seas, the common highway 
of mankind. 

So the question turns upon the difference be- 
tween the right to life itself, when one is where 
he is entitled to be, and the right to property, 
which is but a means to life; on the difference 
between a right which may be assessed in terms 
of dollars and cents and paid for, and a right 
which cannot be assessed and paid for. It is a 
difference which the law has recognized from 
antiquity. Sir Edward Coke stated it in Mouse 's 
Case, 1 where he held blameless a ferryman for 
jettisoning his cargo in an effort to preserve 
those on board. On the same basis rests the 
right of municipal authorities to destroy prop- 
erty in order to prevent the spread of a con- 
flagration. Indeed, even that otherwise so little 
sapient organization calling itself "The Emer- 
gency Peace Commission' ' recognized that we 
could not arbitrate matters with Germany unless 
the latter first discontinued ruthless submarine 
warfare. 

There is, moreover, a larger aspect of the 
subject. The duty of our Government to come 
to the protection of the lives of our citizens in 

1 12 Coke 63. 



INTERNATIONAL LAW 59 

the exercise of their rights of trade and travel 
was a very immediate one, but it was overshad- 
owed in this instance by an even more impera- 
tive duty, and that was to the future security 
of our communications with western Europe. 
Germany has made a shambles of the Atlantic 
highway, she has dyed with the blood of our 
citizens those very waters which make the road- 
way of the vast part of both our commercial 
and intellectual exchanges. Is she to be per- 
mitted to succeed in her purposes by such 
methods f And if she, why not others ? Are the 
transcendently important part of our foreign 
trade and the vital thread of intercourse with 
the sources of our civilization to be held hence- 
forth in fee to any international marauder which 
may consider itself entitled to a bigger " place 
in the sun"? The submarine is a new instru- 
ment of warfare, and whether it is to prove a 
blessing or a curse to mankind is now to be 
determined once for all. Used within the limits 
set by the rules of international law, it may well 
prove a valuable addition to the arsenal of de- 
fensive warfare, and so a force making for 
international peace. Used in the way that Ger- 
many is using it, it must remain a terror to 
civilization unless inventive genius contrives 
some way of cancelling it. And there is no na- 
tion whose concern at the outcome can surpass 
that of our own country. 

When, therefore, the German Imperial Gov- 
ernment issued its challenge on January 31, 
1917, our Government was bound to take it up 



60 THE WORLD PERIL 

or else to abdicate its trusteeship of essential 
rights and interests of the American people. 
For in the face of the downright declaration 
that every vessel encountered thenceforward by 
German submarines in the waters which wash 
the shores of Great Britain, France and Italy 
" would be sunk," that is, would be sunk without 
warning and regardless of nationality, no single 
loophole was left for ever so dexterous a diplo- 
macy. Yet it is not this fact, nor even German 
brutality of word and threatened act — to which 
indeed something of gratitude was due for clear- 
ing the issue of much obscuration — it is not 
these which offer the most conclusive demon- 
stration of what the cause of international law 
and order demands of us now that we are in 
the war. Germany has violated our rights, and 
so has given us a casus belli. But the vastly 
more important circumstance is that, pursuant 
of the principles avowed by her statesmen, her 
jurists and men of learning, it was inevitable 
that sooner or later she should do just this thing. 
To put the matter somewhat differently : While 
it is Germany's violations of international law 
that have brought us into the war, it is what 
these violations imply that must keep us there 
until Germany is defeated, since they spring 
from ideas which make any rational hope of 
good order in the world of nations a perma- 
nent impossibility. 

Suppose we extend our comparison of the 
derelictions of Great Britain and Germany to 
the apologetic efforts of their statesmen. The 



INTERNATIONAL LAW 61 

British Government originally sought to justify 
its embargo upon neutral trade with Germany 
as a measure of retaliation for Germany's in- 
fractions of the rules of civilized warfare. But 
however available against the other belligerent, 
the argument in question was no sufficient 
answer to neutral protests, since, as our State 
Department put it in answer to the German 
Government when the latter offered the same 
argument in extenuation of the Lusitania crime, 
acts of retaliation "are manifestly indefensible 
when they deprive neutrals of their acknowl- 
edged rights. ' ' And so the British Government 
has, in effect at least, subsequently admitted. 
Thus in his elaborate notes to our Government 
of July, 1915, and April, 1916, Viscount Grey 
endeavored to present the British embargo as 
an allowable application, in view of the condi- 
tions of modern warfare, of the belligerent right 
of blockade. His argument, though exceedingly 
adroit, is unconvincing, since the effect of it is 
to wipe out the distinction between contraband 
goods and innocent goods and to deny the United 
States the benefits of the Declaration of Paris. 
Nevertheless, it has in candor to be admitted 
that the concept upon which the British Govern- 
ment today rests its case for the embargo, the 
doctrine of continuous voyage, also underwent 
a very radical extension at the hands of our 
own Government during the Civil War, when 
Great Britain was the disadvantaged neutral. 
Moreover, the question of the convincingness of 
the British argument is a matter somewhat be- 



62 THE WORLD PERIL 

side the point. For whether it is a sound argu- 
ment or a fallacious one, it is at any rate an 
appeal to law and constitutes therefore an ad- 
mission that the issue which the embargo has 
raised between the United States and Great 
Britain is one to be determined under the law, 
whose ultimate vindication is thus assured. Nor 
is this all: from the outset the British Govern- 
ment has stated its willingness, in harmony with 
the existing treaty between the two countries, 
to refer the dispute at the close of hostilities to 
an international tribunal. 

With this attitude of humane reasonableness, 
addressing itself to like reasonableness with like 
rights and avowing its readiness to abide the 
verdict of the tribunal of the civilized world, 
compare the outgivings of the German Imperial 
Government when it revoked the pledge it had 
given after the sinking of the Sussex. In the 
note which accompanied its brusque announce- 
ment the German Imperial Government used 
these words : 

" Every day by which the terrible struggle is 
prolonged brings new devastations, new dis- 
tress, new death. Every day by which the war 
is shortened preserves on both sides the lives 
of thousands of brave fighters, and is a blessing 
to tortured mankind. The Imperial Govern- 
ment would not be able to answer before its 
own conscience, before the German people and 
before history, if it left any means whatever 
untried to hasten the end of the war. . . . The 
Imperial Government, if it desires in a higher 



INTERNATIONAL LAW 63 

sense to serve humanity and not to do a wrong 
against its own countrymen, must continue the 
battle forced on it anew for existence with all 
its weapons." 

* ' Conscience, f9it history, ' ' ' ' service to human- 
ity,' J "battle for existence' ' — by such phrases 
does the German Imperial Government seek to 
appease the moral sensibilities of those whose 
intelligence it affronts. In the presence of its 
own people it is not so hampered. On the same 
day that the document just quoted from was 
handed to Mr. Gerard, the Imperial Chancellor 
addressed the Ways and Means Committee of 
the Reichstag on the renewal of unrestricted 
submarine warfare as follows: 

"We have been challenged to fight to the end. 
We accept the challenge, we stake everything, 
and we shall be victorious. ... I have always 
proceeded from the standpoint of whether 
U-boat war would bring us nearer victorious 
peace or not. Every means, I said in March, 
that was calculated to shorten the war consti- 
tute [sic] the most humane policy to follow. 2 
When the most ruthless methods are considered 
best calculated to lead us to victory, and swift 
victory, I said, they must be employed. 

' ' This moment has now arrived. Last autumn 
the time was not yet ripe, but today the moment 
has come when with the greatest prospect of 
success we can undertake the enterprise. We 
must not therefore wait any longer. ... As re- 
gards all that human strength can do to enforce 

2 The Sussex pledge was given two months later ! 



64 THE WORLD PERIL 

success for the Fatherland, be assured, gentle- 
men, that nothing has been neglected. Every- 
thing in this respect will be done. ' ' 

Henry James in one of his critical essays 
classifies the pleasures of literature into the 
pleasures of surprise and of recognition. The 
pleasure to be got from reading the foregoing 
passage must today unquestionably be set down 
as of the latter order, though three years ago 
its classification would have been a matter of 
more difficulty. For who can read the words 
just quoted and fail to recall the same speaker 's 
apology for the invasion of Belgium? 

"Gentlemen, we are at present in a state of 
necessity, and necessity knows no law! Our 
troops have occupied Luxemburg : perhaps they 
have already entered Belgian territory. Gentle- 
men, this is contrary to the rules of interna- 
tional law. It is true that the French Govern- 
ment has declared at Brussels that it would 
respect Belgium's neutrality as long as the ad- 
versary would respect it. However, we know 
that France was ready for an invasion. 3 France 
could afford to wait, but we could not ! A French 
invasion on our flank on the lower Rhine might 
have been fatal to us. Thus we were forced to 
disregard the justified protests of Luxemburg 
and Belgium. The wrong — I speak openly — the 
wrong which we thereby commit we shall try 

3 Even German apologists seem today disposed to abandon 
this pitiable fiction. See excerpts from an article by Lieut, 
Gen. Baron von Freytag-Loringhoven, Chief of the Supple- 
mentary General Staff, quoted in The New YorJc Times of 
August 12, 1917. 



INTERNATIONAL LAW 65 

to make good as soon as our military aim is 
attained. Whoever is threatened as we are is 
not allowed to have any other consideration be- 
yond how he will hack his way through.' ' 

Read in the light of later events, how terrible 
appears the relentless candor of these words! 
Yet here are words of compunction, a confession 
of wrong, a pledge of reparation, none of which 
mitigates the speech of last January. Prussian 
ruthlessness did not spring into existence full 
grown ! 

We come therefore to the third dimension of 
our subject, so to speak. I have advanced the 
thesis that Germany's attitude toward the law 
of nations and international obligations consti- 
tutes a perpetual menace to international good 
order and neighborliness, makes them, in truth, 
an impossibility so long as it shall continue. 
Official Germany's attitude in this respect we 
have just passed in survey, and at any rate the 
war must have made it evident to the dullest 
apprehension. What I aim now to show is that 
the views of which Von Bethmann-Hollweg is 
mouthpiece in the passages given above are by 
no means a product of the war alone, but also 
of a way of thinking which, as it preceded the 
war, will be likely to survive it, certainly if Ger- 
many is victorious. Such views may at present 
wear the mask of exigency, but in reality they 
are compound of the sinews and substance of 
a considered philosophy. Their menace for the 
peace of the world is therefore no merely tran- 
sient one. 



66 THE WORLD PERIL 

The founder of Prussian political thought was 
Hegel, who presents the State as the complete 
development of morality on earth and as en- 
trusted with the mission of spreading its own 
peculiar culture (Kultur) ; and especially was 
this so of the Prussian state, the last word of 
Deity in the field of statecraft. By what meth- 
ods, however, is the Kultur-Staat — Prussia in 
particular — to fulfill its missionary role 1 Hegel 
does not say; but his influential disciple, Pro- 
fessor Adolf Lasson, is more explicit, as the 
following extracts from his essay "Das Kultur - 
Ideal und der Krieg" will show: 4 

"Between states war alone can hold the 
sceptre. Conflict is the essence and rule of 
international relations; friendship the accident 
and exception. . . . 

"A small state has a right to existence only 
in proportion to its power of resistance. — 
Between states there is only one right in force 
and that is the right of the strongest. . . . 

"A state is incapable of committing crime. 
. . . Whether a treaty should be observed or not 
is a question not of right but of interest. . . . 
Not all the treaties in the world can alter the 
fact that the weak is always the prey of the 
strong so soon as the latter finds it worth while 
to act on this principle. . . . 

"The state which is organized only for peace 
is not a true state. . . . War is the fundamental 
phenomenon in the life of the state and the 

* See also his Prineip und ZunTcunft des V olTcerrechts (Berlin 
1871). 



INTERNATIONAL LAW 67 

preparation for it occupies the place of pre- 
ponderant importance in the national life. . . . 

"It is not only the state's own possessions 
which are at stake in war, but also those which 
it has not acquired and must conquer. It is 
absurd to pretend indignation at the idea of 
conquest. The only essential point is the pur- 
pose of conquest. . . . 

"Civilization is the general improvement of 
civilization upon barbarism. Culture [Kultur] 
is the distinctive form which civilization takes 
with this or that people. The diverse forms of 
Culture are mutually opposed to one another. 
Each menaces the other, for each believes itself 
the true and perfect form of civilization, and 
so desires to extend its influence. . . . Every 
rational war is a war between competing cul- 
tures. . . . 

"The National State, representing the high- 
est expression of the Culture of its race, can 
come into being only through the destruction of 
other states, and this destruction can be effected 
only by means of violence. ... To demand a 
peaceable development of the different forms 
of Culture is to demand the impossible, it is to 
reverse the order of nature, it is to set up a false 
image in the place of the true morality. ' ' 

When in 1868 Lasson first published the 
brochure from which the above passages are 
borrowed, his views stirred liberal Germany to 
vehement protest, but the brilliant successes of 
Bismarck's policy of "blood and iron," inter- 
preted by the eloquence of Von Treitschke in 



68 THE WORLD PERIL 

terms of Prussian history, have long since done 
their work, as the pages of Bernhardi and the 
pamphlets of the Pan-Germanists attest. The 
key to Lasson's position, which is today the posi- 
tion of a most influential section of German so- 
ciety, is furnished by his exaltation of the claims 
of culture. 5 Americans and Englishmen, un- 
blessed by an overweening consciousness of su- 
periority or divinely appointed mission to the 
rest of Christendom, are apt to regard culture, 
in the sense in which Germans use the term, as 
considerably less important than civilization, and 
this they look upon as primarily the work of 
gifted individuals and as only indirectly served 
by the state through its service of the individual. 
Furthermore, they hold that there is normally 
no greater service which the state can render 
its citizens than to maintain friendly contacts 
with other states as the essential condition of 
cooperation in the common tasks of civilization. 
The Prussian point of view impinges upon 
international law in two ways. Lasson's idea 
that the State can do no wrong of course makes 
international law impossible from the outset. 
The more representative German view, how- 
ever, though it ultimately arrives at the same 

5 On the general subject of Pan- Germanism see the familiar 
volumes of Usher and Cheradame; also Nippold's Der deutsche 
Chauvinismus. The Berliner Tageblatt of April 21, 1913, 
makes this interesting statement: "It has lately been clearly 
demonstrated that numerous threads connect the clamorous 
leaders of Pan-Germanism with the official world." Cer- 
tainly one finds it impossible to avoid the conclusion that if 
Germany were to win the war, the Pan-German influence 
would determine the use she would make of her victory. 



INTEENATIONAL LAW 69 

result, does so by a more roundabout method. In 
the phraseology of an exponent, it plants in the 
timbers of the legal edifice "the secret worm" 
which ultimately consumes the whole fabric. 
What this "secret worm" is we shall now see. 

One of the most remarkable products of a 
German pen since the outbreak of the war is a 
brochure by Josef Kohler, written to defend the 
invasion of Belgium and bearing the caption 
4 'Not Kennt Kein Gebot." Q Kohler, who is 
professor of jurisprudence at the University of 
Berlin and a Prussian Privy Councillor, is the 
most eminent of living German jurists and the 
most prolific of all jurists, "a veritable twen- 
tieth century Leibnitz," with over five hundred 
titles of books and articles to his credit. Though, 
like Lasson, a disciple of Hegel, he was until re- 
cent days a preacher of international peace and 
cooperation. Thus in his "Lehrbuch der Rechts- 
philo sophie," which appeared in 1907, he had 
written : ' ' Passionate devotion to one national- 
ity .. . will long struggle against the idea of 
bowing to a supernational law. Nevertheless, 
the idea must gradually penetrate, and when it 
has become fully developed the chief step toward 
the peace of the nations will have been taken. ' ' 
And to Lasson *s notion of the inevitable antag- 
onism of national cultures he had opposed the 
ideal of their mutual tolerance, thus : i i The indi- 
vidual state should not be the only centre of cul- 
ture, but the attitude of all states to one another 

e The full title is Not Kennt Kein Geoot, die Tlieorie des 
Notrechtes und die Ereignisse unserer Zeit (Berlin, 1915). 



70 THE WORLD PERIL 

should so conform to the cultural order that one 
does not clash with or operate against the cul- 
tural development of another.' ' But the iron 
of the war has entered into Kohler's soul, and 
his recent writings prove only too conclusively 
that he has joined forces with that section of 
German jurists one of whom has recently pro- 
posed that the German Branch of the Interna- 
tional Law Association had better cut loose from 
its foreign affiliations, the reason given being 
that ' ' Germany has such different interests from 
those of other countries that its tendencies in 
this field are not those of other nations." 7 

With characteristic candor Kohler distin- 
guishes at the outset of his essay the two en- 
tirely different but frequently confounded 
notions of self-preservation and self-defence. 
He then proceeds to rake over the whole field 
of casuistry for the stock situations in which 
the individual is confronted with the choice of 
violating the rights of others or himself coming 
to grief. The crux of his position is disclosed 
in his treatment of that situation which is la- 
belled the " Aut Ego aut Tu" In this case two 

7 The author of these words was Prof. Th. Niemeyer of the 
University of Kiel, also a Prussian Privy Councillor, and him- 
self the President of the German Branch. For further evidence 
of the disturbance which Kohler 's thinking has undergone in 
consequence of the war, see an article of his on "The New 
Law of Nations,' ' translated for the June, 1917, number of 
the Michigan Law Review by Prof. Jesse S. Beeves. For proof, 
however, that not all German publicists have gone off their 
heads since August, 1914, see a letter by Dr. Hans Wehberg 
of Diisseldorf in the Berliner Tageolatt of September 24, 
1915. Prof. Eeeves refers to this letter and a translation of 
it appears in the American Journal of International Law for 
October, 1915, pp. 925-7. 



INTERNATIONAL LAW 71 

men who have been shipwrecked find themselves 
grasping a plank which is insufficient to bear 
them both ; the stronger man pushes the weaker 
away and is eventually saved, while the other 
is drowned. Commenting on this class of cases, 
Kohler writes: "When two persons act in a 
condition of necessity [Notrecht] and the legal 
order can discover no ground for giving the 
jjreference to either, then must the legal order 
give way to the natural order and crown the 
victor. Das ist die RealdialeJctiJc der Welt." 

But if the justification of self-preservation 
may be claimed by the individual, Kohler con- 
tinues, how much more may it be by the State, 
"a human institution of the highest rank and 
of deep spiritual significance, as well as the eco- 
nomic foundation of our being.' ' Hence, "the 
relations of one state to another are governed 
in the highest degree by the law of necessity 
[Notstandsrecht] . The state which is forced to 
fight for its existence acts rightly if in the course 
of its struggle it encroaches upon the rights of 
other states, even upon the rights of neutrals, 
for its existence comes first ; to this may every- 
thing or anything be sacrificed. ' ' And so it was 
with Germany's invasion of Belgium: "Even 
if we entirely ignore the justification of self- 
defence and Belgium's earlier forfeiture of her 
right of neutrality, still Germany was entirely 
within her rights ; what she did was not an ex- 
cusable wrong, but she acted in exercise of the 
law of necessity, and at one and the same time 
fulfilled a holy duty to herself and to the world 



72 THE WORLD PERIL 

of culture [Kultur], She preserved her exist- 
ence; and Belgium thereby incurred a heavy 
fate, for which she has but herself to thank. ' ' — 
Thus Von Bethmann-Hollweg, despite his seem- 
ing candor, spoke falsely after all! Germany 
did no wrong in entering Belgium. True, she vio- 
lated both her own promises and international 
law, but she fulfilled a Higher Law, the law of 
her necessity — as judged by herself; and Real- 
dialektik (which apparently is Hegelian for 
"Unser alte Gott" of the Kaiser's incantations) 
had its way once more. The thought occurs, 
Why, if Realdialehtih is such a beneficent 
agency, should its interventions be confined to 
cases of necessity? 

But the subject has also its technical side, 
and so I wish once more to confront the German 
point of view with the English-American, or 
such evidences of the latter as seem best au- 
thenticated; and to begin at the beginning, I 
will match Professor Kohler 's hypothetical case 
of "Aut Ego aut Tu" with one which actually 
got into court. I refer to the case of Regina v. 
Dudley and Stephens, the facts in which were 
found by the jury as follows : * ' That on July 
5, 1884, the prisoners, with one Brooks, all able 
bodied English seamen, and the deceased [Par- 
ker], an English boy between seventeen and 
eighteen, the crew of an English yacht [the 
Mignonette], were cast away in a storm on the 
high seas, sixteen hundred miles from the Cape 
of Good Hope, and were compelled to put into 
an open boat ; . . . that on the eighteenth day, 



INTERNATIONAL LAW 73 

when they had been seven days without food 
and five without water, the prisoners spoke to 
Brooks as to what should be done if no succor 
came, and suggested some one should be sacri- 
ficed to save the rest, but Brooks dissented, and 
the boy, to whom they were understood to refer, 
was not consulted; that on the day before the 
act in question . . . the prisoners spoke of their 
having families, and suggested that it would be 
better to kill the boy that their lives be saved 
. . . ; that next day, no vessel appearing, Dud- 
ley . . . made signs to Stephens and Brooks 
that the boy had better be killed; . . . that 
Stephens agreed to the act, but Brooks dissented 
from it . . . ; that Dudley with the assent of 
Stephens went to the boy and telling him his 
time had come, put a knife to his throat and 
killed him ; that the three men fed upon the boy 
for four days ; that on the fourth day after the 
act the boat was picked up by a passing vessel, 
and the prisoners were rescued. . . ... " 

The jury put the question to the court whether 
the accused were guilty of murder. The court 
answered "Yes," and proceeded to reduce de- 
fence's argument to an absurdity: "It was not 
contended," said they, "that the person killed 
under circumstances of so-called necessity would 
not be justified in resisting. Now, if resistance 
is justifiable at all it is justifiable even to the 
infliction of death when one's own life is at 
stake. Therefore, we should have a state of 
things in which A is not punishable for killing 
B, nor yet B for killing A if he cannot prevent 



74 THE WORLD PERIL 

A from killing him. But to say that A may 
kill B if he can, and also that B may kill A if 
he can, is to deny the existence of any law at 
all." In other words, Professor Kohler's re- 
gion of the Higher Law of Necessity in which 
Realdialektih holds sway is dismissed as a re- 
gion devoid of law! Justice Grove also added 
this interesting note : ' ' If the two accused men 
were justified in killing Parker, then, if not 
rescued in time, two of the three survivors would 
be justified in killing the third, and of the two 
who remained the stronger would be justified 
in killing the weaker, so that three men might 
be justifiably killed to give the fourth a chance 
of surviving. ? ' 8 Again, a shocking lack of con- 
fidence in Realdialektih! 

All the objections which exist to admitting 
the justification of supposed necessity for 
breaches of the ordinary law are reenforced 
when it comes to breaches of international law. 
For one thing, when it is brought into the ordi- 
nary courts the plea signifies the grim issue of 
life and death, while as between states the so- 
called " right of self -preservation" is, in ninety- 
nine cases out of a hundred, the merest figure 
of speech. Again, there is no tribunal above 
states which is capable of passing upon such a 
plea with impartiality and precision as there is 
over individuals, so that each state is left ordi- 
narily to assess the sufficiency of the plea ad- 
vanced by itself. Finally, while international 

8L. R., 14 Q. B. D. 273; Law Quarterly Beview, I, 282. See 
also ib. 51. 



INTERNATIONAL LAW 75 

law does not — and perhaps never can — form a 
closed circle, and each state is consequently left 
free to make war for reasons which seem good 
to it, yet the advantage which accrues to a state 
from having the sanction of law on its side is 
an important one and should not be available 
on a plea which frankly overrides international 
law. 

Though English and American writers on in- 
ternational law, in a misplaced zeal to become 
apologists for certain pet derelictions of their 
own governments, have seemed at times to give 
the so-called "right of self-preservation' ' an 
undue extension, yet the better considered utter- 
ances of such writers will generally be found to 
confine the idea to its proper field. 9 A typical 
case, which is discussed by all the authorities, is 
furnished by the action of the British Govern- 
ment in connection with the Caroline affair of 
1837. This vessel, which was controlled by Can- 
adian rebels, was attacked by a British expedi- 
tion while lying in American waters. The British 
Government defended the act as a necessary 
act of self-protection against an impending in- 
jury for which, if it had occurred, the Govern- 
ment of the United States would have been 
responsible. Eventually, our Government ac- 
cepted this explanation of the affair as satis- 

9 See the discussion by Prof. C. de Visscher of the University 
of Ghent in his article entitled "Les Lois de Guerre et la 
Theorie de la Necessite" in the Revue Generate de Droit 
Internationale Public for January-February, 1917; also Prof. 
John Westlake's International Law: Part I, " Peace,' ' Ch. 
XIII. 



76 THE WOKLD PERIL 

factory. In the words of Mr. Webster, it was 
admitted that, assuming there was "a necessity 
of self-defence, instant and overwhelming, leav- 
ing no choice of means, and no moment for 
deliberation," and assuming the action of the 
British Government to have been " limited by 
that necessity and kept clearly within it, ' ' such 
action was proper. In other words, the British 
Government exercised its right of self-help 
against an impending wrong. It may be added 
that our controversy with Spain over the Vir- 
ginius affair in 1873 was adjusted along sim- 
ilar lines. 

But the capital product of German thought 
of recent years, touching the relation of the 
state to international law, has still to be con- 
sidered. I refer of course to the doctrine of 
Kriegs-raison. 10 The source of this doctrine is 
to be found in certain passages of the Prussian 
Von Clausewitz 's work " Vom Kriege," of which 
the following are representative: "War is an 
act of violence designed to force the adversary 
to perform our will. ... In the employment 
of such violence there are no limits. . . . War 
knows only one method : force, . . . and this em- 
ployment of brute force is the absolute rule." 
Certain German publicists however have sought 
a more reputable parentage for their darling 

10 On this subject, see the article cited in note 9, supra, 
with the writers there given; Westlake's Chapters on the Prin- 
ciples of International Law, 238 ff.; Prof. Amos S. Hershey's 
The Essentials of International Public Law, pp. 353 and 389, 
with accompanying notes; also articles by Profs. Beeves and 
Niemeyer in the Michigan Law Review, XIII, 175 ff. 



INTERNATIONAL LAW 77 

theory in a phrase from Grotius' great work: 
"Omnia licere quae necesaria sunt ad finem 
belli/' which may be rendered in the words of 
the Great General Staff as follows: "What is 
permissible includes every means of war with- 
out which the object of the war cannot be ob- 
tained.' ' Thus the founder of international 
law, who tells us that he wrote principally to 
protest against the barbarities of warfare, is 
made sponsor for Prussian f rightfulness ! 

The fact of the matter is that Grotius' words 
may be interpreted in either of two ways : they 
may mean that all methods of warfare are legiti- 
mate which are thought to be necessary ; or they 
may imply that necessary methods of warfare 
must first be legitimate ; that is, within the law. 
The English-American view of military neces- 
sity accords with the latter of these interpreta- 
tions. By it a military commander, even when 
acting within the rules of civilized warfare, is 
entitled to use no more violence at a given time 
than is necessary under the circumstances. The 
doctrine of Kriegs-raison, on the other hand, 
subjects the rules of civilized warfare at all 
times to what a commander — and a fortiori, a 
government — may deem essential to achieve 
success. The doctrine of " Necessity' ' is thus 
divested of all disguises and pretences: that 
which is necessary and which therefore must 
be obtained at all hazards is German victory! 
The practical conclusions which the German of- 
ficial mind has drawn from these premises have 
been made known to a still amazed world in 



78 THE WORLD PEEIL 

terms of blood, ruin and defilement: the in- 
vasion of Belgium, the atrocities of Louvain, 
Dinant and a score of other towns, the execu- 
tion of innocent hostages, the shelling of Eheims 
Cathedral, the sinking of the Lusitania, the use 
of poisonous gases, the bombardment of unde- 
fended towns, the indiscriminate slaughter of 
women and children by explosives hurled from 
aircraft, the enslavement of Belgian workmen, 
the deportation of the young women of Lille, 
the devastation of northern France, ruthless 
submarine warfare, the sinking of hospital ships, 
and so on and so on. To be sure, the German 
Imperial Government has sometimes sought to 
alleviate the odium of universal indignation by 
special explanations of some of these acts, but 
even where such explanations have not dealt in 
downright falsehoods, their unallowable as- 
sumptions have always revealed the lineaments 
of the real explanation. 

There are those who contend, however, that 
it is futile to attempt to govern war by law, 
who seem indeed rather disposed to applaud 
Germany for making war as hideous as possible, 
saying that the thing to do is to abolish war! 
Is Kriegs-raison entitled even to this somewhat 
ambiguous approval? No; for the maintenance 
of the law of war so long as we have wars and 
the abolition of war as soon as possible are 
causes which, far from being opposed to one 
another, have everything in common. For one 
thing, the restraints which international law 
seeks to impose upon the business of war, and 



INTERNATIONAL LAW 79 

which Germany has so ruthlessly and system- 
atically swept aside, rest upon the belief that 
there are certain funded values of Christian 
civilization which no necessity, even of a state, 
is warranted in offending, and the abolition of 
war must appeal to the same belief. Again, 
those who advance this view seem not to per- 
ceive that the German doctrine which they so 
heedlessly ratify constitutes a part of Ger- 
many's preparation for war, and to that extent 
an incitation to war. For not being hampered 
by the scruples which trouble other govern- 
ments, the German Imperial Government has 
just that additional reason to hope for the suc- 
cess of its aggressions. Finally, the view in 
question ignores the fact that the difference be- 
tween Anglo-American and German methods of 
warfare connotes a difference between two 
theories of the purpose of war which is of im- 
mense significance from the point of view of 
the movement for a permanent peace. 

The German theory of the purpose of war is 
stated by Bernhardi as follows: "War is an 
instrument of progress, a regulator in the life 
of humanity, an indispensable factor of civiliza- 
tion, a creative power.' ' This is but Lasson's 
idea over again, that "War is the fundamental 
phenomenon in the life of state s"; or, as Von 
Treitschke has put it, "War is the forceful ex- 
tension of policy. ,, The English- American 
theory is very different and points to very dif- 
ferent results. It is that war is primarily rem- 
edial, a redress of grievances, a method of self- 



80 THE WORLD PERIL 

help. And being procedural, with the vindica- 
tion of the law its object, the rules governing it 
must be followed as a matter of course. More 
than that, however, since war takes place chiefly 
for the lack of a better method of obtaining 
one's rights, the essential step in its abolition 
must be to supply the procedural deficiencies 
of international law. In short, where the Prus- 
sian idea of war presents it as a positive good, 
the Anglo-American idea presents it as a neces- 
sary evil, and offers the hope that it will not 
always be even necessary. 

The quarrel between our country and Ger- 
many comes, therefore, ultimately to be a very 
deep seated one. Back of the conflicting theories 
of legal obligation which it involves stand con- 
flicting theories of the purpose of war and of 
the nature of civilization itself. Nor is this 
remarkable when one considers the contrasted 
histories of the two nations. The history of 
Germany is simply the history of Prussia 's con- 
quest of the rest of Germany, of the triumph 
of the Prussian military autocracy over the 
rights of weaker populations and communities. 
More unfortunately still, the pietistic German 
mind has brought to the interpretation of this 
history the dangerous notions of religious and 
philosophic obscurantism, tricked out for mod- 
ern use with the terminology of biological sci- 
ence. Since the history of German unification 
has been a history of violence, this interpreta- 
tion runs in effect, then violence must be the 
way of God. The Anglo-American mind is at 



INTERNATIONAL LAW 81 

once more mundane and more reverent. Mis- 
trustful of "Dark Forces,' ' it finds it especially 
hard to believe that Providence is wont to em- 
ploy the devices of Satan. Its political achieve- 
ment, wrought out mainly by methods of 
compromise, is constitutional democracy and 
imperial federation; its political ideal a recon- 
ciliation of the equality of men with the rule of 
law. It regards law as normally the triumph of 
opinion and so of reason, as so much snatched 
from primitive chaos, the way which civilization 
must in the long run always take against bar- 
barism. True, in an imperfect world the law 
must frequently rely on the support of force, 
but it is the law which validates force and not 
force which validates the law. 

Hence, though we entered the war in behalf 
of our own offended rights, we fight in it in be- 
half of the law and the order of the world. A 
nation which applauds such crimes as the sink- 
ing of the Lusitania has lost all sense of re- 
sponsibility as a member of the family of na- 
tions; a nation which thinks and acts by the 
madcap logic of "world dominion or downfall" 
is a perpetual menace to the peace of the world. 
Such logic can be refuted in only one way; for 
if nothing succeeds like success, nothing fails 
like failure. Germany will see eye to eye with 
her neighbors when she has been chastened by 
the bitter disappointment of defeat. For her 
past merits the world owes her this boon. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE WORLD BALANCE OF POWER 
IMPERILLED 

Mason W. Tyler 

When the United States went to war with 
Germany last April the causes of this action 
seemed clear to most of us: it was Germany's 
continual violation of international law and of 
the dictates of humanity in her use of the sub- 
marine and her breach of her promises to us to 
refrain from such illegality and inhumanity in 
the future. To almost all of us these were the 
sole causes for our action and probably still 
remain its chief justification. But there is 
coming to us, exactly as there came to Great 
Britain after she had gone to war to avenge the 
violation of treaty right in Belgium, the realiza- 
tion that together with this cause for action 
there was another — less ostensibly international 
and humanitarian, but none the less vital — the 
danger from the enormous power of Germany; 
the need of the restoration of the balance of 
power in Europe. At first this phase of the 
problem was little discussed in England, but 
more and more it came to the front. Finally 
in an editorial published March 8, 1915, the 

82 



BALANCE OF POWER 83 

London Times came out with the frank state- 
ment that England had not gone to war for Bel- 
gian neutrality but to restore the balance of 
power threatened by Germany. That this is an 
overemphasis is very probable, but it does show 
that, in the minds of at least some of the leaders 
of English political thought, this cause for action 
had assumed first place. Nor has this feeling 
lessened as time goes on until now probably the 
main motive in the fighting is the desire, on the 
part of the Allies, to put an end to the over- 
weening pretensions of Germany to world domi- 
nation and to restore the balance of power. 
Have we, in America, any interest in this mo- 
tive? Would we be willing to accept a settle- 
ment which, while restoring Belgium and Serbia 
with suitable indemnities, would still leave Ger- 
many and her allies — to use a euphemistic term 
— the masters of Europe? Or do we feel that 
such a settlement would be dangerous for us 
and ought not to be allowed? And if so how is 
such an ending of the war to be prevented? 
These are questions it seems to me America 
ought to face as soon as possible, for her answer 
to them will modify to no small extent our pol- 
icy both during the war and in the settlement 
which follows it. 

Have we a vital interest in the maintenance 
of a world balance of power? 1 It would seem 

i The phrase ' ' balance of power ' ' used here and elsewhere 
in this chapter refers to the world balance of power and not to 
the European balance, unless the latter is specifically stated. 
Its use gives rise to some confusion because there are several 
local "balances of power" as well as the world balance. In- 



84 THE WORLD PERIL 

that those who would answer this question in 
the negative would bring forward one or both 
of two lines of argument to support themselves. 
The first is that the balance of power solution 
is intrinsically bad, that it has always made for 
strife and always will and that the United States 
should stand for an international policy which 
would unite all nations regardless of their power 
or influence. The second is that our best policy 
is found in abstention from European affairs 
and an interest only in the two Americas. On 
this policy, they say, we have thriven and there 
is no advantage in giving it up at this time. 
Let Europe settle its own affairs, we will settle 
those of the American continents. These two 
arguments I will treat in turn. 

deed whenever any issue arises the Powers most interested — 
and they are not necessarily those of the first magnitude — are 
apt to group (around) two parties to preserve the balance of 
power in the locality affected by the issue. Thus Venizelos, 
in forming the Serbo-Greek Alliance of 1913, stated that its 
object was "to preserve the balance of power in the Balkans" 
— that is in the regions directly affected by the Balkan wars. 
The most important of these local balances of power is the 
European balance, which, from the magnitude of the interests 
involved, has often been spoken of as the balance of power. 
But with the advent of world policy there has arisen a world 
balance of power, which may be termed a synthesis of all the 
local balances of power, but which, owing to the fact that the 
greatest amount of material force at present existing in the 
world lies in Europe, rests more or less on the European local 
balance for a foundation and is merely modified in its super- 
structure by non-European nations. This world balance is by 
no means a result of our entry into the war, although this 
event has made more clear a situation which has existed for 
some years. The United States would seem, ever since the war 
with Spain, to have been considered by European statesmen 
as a possible make-weight for or against their designs and to 
have been courted accordingly. Our entry into the war appears 
to signify our conscious acceptance of the situation and its 
attendant responsibilities. 



BALANCE OF POWER 85 

We ought to work for internationalism and 
not perpetuate the outworn theory of the bal- 
ance of power : so say the first class of objectors. 
And in substantial agreement with them is Von 
Bethmann-Hollweg, the former German Chan- 
cellor, who declared in one of his peace speeches 
that "the English balance of power must dis- 
appear, because it is, as the English poet Shaw 
recently said, ' a hatching of other wars. ' ' ' But 
it is in the striking unanimity of opinion between 
the former German Chancellor and our class of 
objectors that the danger in the theories pre- 
sented by the latter seems to lie. Of course Von 
Bethmann-Hollweg wished the balance of power 
to be abandoned because it stood in the way of 
German mastery of Europe and beyond that of 
the world, or, as he preferred to put it, such 
a theory stood in the way of "the inviolable and 
strong position of Germany.' ' On the other 
hand the friends of internationalism wish to 
abandon the theory because it, in their opinion, 
prevents the realization of their hopes. Which 
of the two is right? 

It seems fairly clear that the first result of 
such an abandonment will be the mastery of 
Germany in Europe and probably throughout 
the world. But will such a situation produce, 
in turn, internationalism? Will the Power which 
commenced the war by proclaiming that "neces- 
sity knows no law," which has since broken 
nearly all the rules of international law which 
stood in the way of the attainment of its desires, 
be a fit guardian of the new internationalism 



86 THE WORLD PERIL 

which is to bring relief to a war worn world? 
And even had Germany shown the greatest re- 
spect for the law it is doubtful if an internation- 
alism imposed by one nation according to its 
own interpretation on the other Powers will be 
either a lasting or a good one. For the inter- 
national mind is not the property of any one 
nation ; it draws its inspirations from every cor- 
ner of the earth, and even the most catholic of 
Powers — and Germany can hardly claim this 
distinction — is too narrow to be its true inter- 
preter. Finally it is very doubtful if this mod- 
ern reincarnation of the Roman Empire will 
prevent war in the future; the Roman Empire 
had plenty of wars, but they were termed re- 
bellions and civil tumults. 

The real internationalism for which we all 
must strive is a free grouping of free Powers, 
each contributing its best to the common good, 
and this can never be brought about by the 
hegemony of any one Power, it can only be built 
up when something like a balance of power is 
restored to Europe. And so it would appear 
that all internationalists who wish a real adop- 
tion of their plans must work, first of all, for the 
establishment of a world balance of power. But 
that balance is now endangered by the preten- 
sions of the Teutonic Powers and can only be 
restored when those Powers are defeated in the 
field. Internationalism, then, is not like that 
1 ' something wonderful, grand and good ' 9 of Kip- 
ling 's " Rhyme of the Banderlog" that is "won 
by merely wishing we could. ' ' Under the pres- 



BALANCE OF POWER 87 

ent circumstances it must be fought for and 
won by the sword. 

Finally : it was just that policy of abstention 
from the conflict, that taking of position above 
the claims of either side, that desire to impress 
on each the dictates of internationalism that 
marked the policy of the United States from the 
summer of 1914 until the spring of 1917. And 
how did it succeed? Our plea for international 
right was listened to by Germany just so long 
as she felt that the danger from our entry into 
the war outweighed the advantage to be secured 
from acting contrary to our desires. In other 
words we were reckoned by Germany, not as an 
international force but as a factor in the world 
balance of power. And when she felt that our 
weight as such a factor was not to be considered 
against the gain to be derived from the unre- 
stricted use of the submarine she broke with us 
and with internationalism and went her own 
way. We have learned that we cannot — at least 
in dealing with such a Power as Germany — act 
as a force for internationalism unless we, at the 
same time, hold the balance of power which will 
make our views respected. And this balance 
of power must be fought for. 2 

The second class of objectors claim that we 
have no concern in the European balance of 
power and that our best policy lies in abstention 
from European affairs and a careful cultivation 

2 For a discussion of the broader phases of internationalism 
and the war see the chapter "The World Paril and World 
Peace," infra. 



88 THE WORLD PERIL 

of the relations with our South American neigh- 
bors — of Pan- Americanism. 3 This is the tradi- 
tional American policy, hallowed by its associa- 
tion with Washington's Farewell Address and 
with the second part of the Monroe Doctrine. 
Moreover it was, during the greater part of 
the nineteenth century, the only possible policy 
for us. For we had before us a continent three 
thousand miles broad to be cultivated and to 
be brought into the sphere of American influ- 
ence. In the face of such a task it was abso- 
lutely impossible for us to give any attention 
to European affairs, even had we had the 
strength to make our influence felt, which was 
obviously not the case. Add to that the fact that 
we had, during the first half of the century, to 
deal with the question of slavery and then to 
wage a gigantic war to settle the problem. It 
is clear that any lessening of attention from the 
task in hand could be little less than fatal. Nor 
were the dangers from such a policy of absten- 
tion sufficient to cause any uneasiness. The 
Atlantic barrier was a strong protection for it 
was almost impossible for any European Power, 
with the possible exception of England with her 
strong navy and her Canadian base, to wage 
war with us across it. And England, in the 
years following the Treaty of Ghent, was suffi- 
ciently occupied elsewhere and had no desire 
to wage war with us. Moreover nations lived 
more unto themselves in those simpler days, and 

s This topic is treated in its broader aspects in the chapter 
' 'The World Peril and the Two Americas," infra. 



BALANCE OF POWER 89 

the present network of international trade and 
credit was in a far more rudimentary stage. 
Even the great Napoleonic wars, involving all 
Europe, do not seem to have greatly influenced 
more than one phase of our economic activity, 
our seaboard commerce. We lived a nation 
apart, occupied with our task of developing the 
North American continent, and Europe paid 
little attention to us and we to Europe. 

But today the situation is utterly different. 
In the first place the task of developing and 
Americanizing — to use a popular term — the 
North American continent is finished and our 
activities have begun to overflow into other 
fields. Not that it has more than begun, for 
our exports of manufactured goods are still 
small in relation to our home consumption, and 
yet these exports are constantly increasing. 
Then too the international network of trade 
and credit is now so well developed that we can 
no longer, in these spheres of life, live to our- 
selves. In comparison to the Napoleonic wars 
the effects of the present world war on our eco- 
nomic life seem almost as a mountain to a mole 
hill. Finally, to our no small disturbance of 
mind, we are realizing that the Atlantic is no 
longer the barrier against invasion that it was 
even a quarter century ago, that improvements 
in military technique and in transportation have 
made it possible to make at least a most de- 
structive raid on our coast cities, that sub- 
marines may soon, if not now, be able to cross 
the ocean and raid our commerce. Just as Great 



90 THE WORLD PERIL 

Britain has learned that her real frontier is not 
the Channel but the valley of the Meuse — to 
quote Lord Kitchener's expression — so we are 
learning that our first line of defence is not the 
Atlantic coast but a proper maintenance of the 
balance of power in Europe. Otherwise the bat- 
tle will be fought on our own territory and we 
will pay heavily, no matter what the outcome 
be. The European balance of power is the first 
line of trenches in American defence. 

And what would be the effect of a German 
supremacy in Europe! Can we be sure that 
such a Power would leave us in peace to pursue 
our Pan-American policy? Has Germany no 
interests in South America to be defended and 
enlarged? It would be perfectly possible to cite 
any number of Pan-German writers who advo- 
cate the extension of the German colonial empire 
to South America. Of these perhaps the most 
notable is Tannenberg, who frankly earmarks 
southern Brazil and the Argentine for Germany 
in his "Deutschland um 1950." But it may be 
admitted that too much attention must not be 
paid to irresponsible vaporings such as this. 
That they have been widely read in Germany 
is certain, but that they have had or will have 
any effect on German official action is far from 
sure. But, on the other hand, it is extremely 
doubtful if it is advisable to put too much confi- 
dence in the statement of Count von Bernstorff 
that Germany had no intention of gaining terri- 
torial acquisitions in South America, for such 
a statement was, under the circumstances, the 



BALANCE OF POWER 91 

only one that the German representative to this 
country could have made. One is reminded of 
the answer Bismarck is said to have made to an 
inconvenient question: "No, but I would have 
told you that anyway. ' ' 

Probably the best guide to the extent of the 
danger Germany may be in the future to Pan- 
Americanism is found in the actual situation in 
South America. That there are many Germans 
settled there, that these immigrants are fairly 
well concentrated in southern Brazil, that Ger- 
mans have acquired no small interests there and 
have built up a large trade, the largest foreign 
trade in some states and a very respectable com- 
petitor in almost all the others, may be taken 
as almost undoubted facts. That any attempt 
by American interests to push their own trade 
at the expense of these German interests will 
lead to friction between the two countries is at 
least possible. And the extent of this friction 
as well as the lengths to which Germany will go 
in defence of her interests will, in all probabil- 
ity, depend on the condition in which she 
emerges from the present war. A triumphant 
Germany, drunk with power, will probably listen 
much more attentively to the appeal of the Pan- 
German and of the South American vested in- 
terests than a Germany that has tried to control 
Europe and failed. And if the other countries 
of Europe are beaten and discouraged they, our 
potential allies, will be the less willing to help 
us when this possible day of reckoning comes. 

But Germany will not probably try the game 



92 THE WORLD PERIL 

alone : and in this lies perhaps the greatest ele- 
ment of danger. The Zimmermann note ought 
to prove to us that Germany is willing to utilize 
all the discordant elements in Pan- America to 
further its designs if necessary. And if we 
allow Germany to become the master of Europe 
and the strongest single Power in the world, we 
must expect that there will be plenty of real- 
politikers in South America who will think they 
see advantages in alliance with such a state. 
Our only defence against such a possibility is 
to prevent Germany from gaining such a posi- 
tion. Remember that Germany has never recog- 
nized the Monroe Doctrine, and that her only 
official pronouncement on it, apart from the 
statement of Von Bernstorff referred to above, 
is Bismarck's declaration that it was an " inter- 
national impertinence. ' ' This phase of the ques- 
tion ought not perhaps to be stressed too much, 
but it ought not to be forgotten. 

Let us suppose, however, for the moment, 
that all the foregoing is pure moonshine, that 
Germany has not and never will have any de- 
signs on South America other than the exploita- 
tion of economic opportunities: even then can 
we feel that the danger from a German mastery 
of Europe is not worth consideration? Let us 
also put the danger of a military attack by Ger- 
many on the United States out of our minds and 
simply consider Germany as confining her active 
intervention to continents other than the Amer- 
icas. How then would we stand? Remember 
that we are becoming more and more a country 



BALANCE OF POWER 93 

of foreign export and that Germany is, with the 
possible exceptions of England and Japan, our 
only great competitor. But this economic ri- 
valry is no longer merely a question of cheap 
manufacture and able salesmanship: govern- 
ments are more and more coming to the aid of 
their exporters, and the political factor will also 
have to be reckoned with. To take one illustra- 
tion: In the midst of the Eusso-Japanese war 
Germany took advantage of Russia's weakness 
to negotiate, as a price of her benevolent neu- 
trality, a commercial treaty which placed Ger- 
man goods at an enormous advantage in the 
Russian market. A Germany, mistress of 
Europe and enormously strong in the outside 
world, will be in a position by bribes or threats 
to enhance greatly her intrinsically strong eco- 
nomic position with the other nations of the 
world. If we build up a market in a given coun- 
try we may find that Germany, through political 
means, has been able to force in her own goods 
at an advantage. The doctrines of the Man- 
chester school have been a little out of date since 
governments have come into the arena behind 
their traders. 

Nor is it merely in the economic sphere that 
we will suffer. Whenever we wish to adopt any 
given line of world policy, whenever we wish to 
push any idea from the Open Door to the League 
to Maintain Peace, we will find that we will have 
to reckon with a Germany far more able than 
we are to impose her wishes on the world. For, 
in the last resort, the value of an idea or a policy 



94 THE WORLD PERIL 

in world politics depends on the amount of force 
that can be brought behind it, and if Germany 
be left mistress of Europe we can easily see that 
the European nations at least will look far more 
for their direction to the Power that is able to 
enforce its wishes than to the United States, 
however convincingly, as arguments, its wishes 
may be set forth. I do not claim that this repre- 
sents an ideal situation, let us hope that a better 
one may come; but such seems to be the world 
as it is at present. 

And so for these reasons it would appear that 
the United States must be vitally interested m 
the maintenance of the balance of power in 
Europe. Not only for our defence but in order 
that we may count for something in the world, 
economically and politically, it is necessary for 
us to defeat any German attempt to win the mas- 
tery of Europe. The old days of isolation are 
past, we are a world Power with interests in 
every part of the earth, and as a world Power 
must we think and act. 

But, you may say, the days of extreme Ger- 
man danger are past : peace votes in the Reichs- 
tag, statements by public men disclaiming im- 
perialistic views show that Germany has no 
intention of becoming a danger to Europe. 
Moreover, the military outlook at present is 
favorable for the Allies with the Germans al- 
most everywhere on the defensive, save for 
counter attacks, and that ought to prove that the 
chance of a Germany triumphant over united 
Europe is slim today and growing slimmer. As 



BALANCE OF POWER 95 

to the first objection I would merely call atten- 
tion to the fact that it is only because of a weak- 
ening of German strength, a disappointment of 
German hopes, that these voices for peace have 
been raised. In December, 1915, when the Ger- 
man tide was high, the Reichstag voted for a 
program of annexations. If in July, 1917, they 
vote for peace it does not necessarily mean that 
they have become converts to internationalism, 
it might merely mean that they feel that a peace 
negotiated at this time will be more favorable 
than one negotiated later and under the some- 
what vague formula "no annexations and no 
indemnities ' ' — an independent Poland under a 
Hapsburg prince, or Belgium forced into eco- 
nomic dependence on Germany would not be 
" annexations ' ' — they hope to gain their ends. 
Nor are the annexationists by any meaiis dead 
in Germany : they will revive at the first German 
success. Indeed the lamentable military collapse 
of the Russian Republic at the time of present 
writing may probably be counted on to revive 
the hopes and influence of this gentry and cor- 
respondingly depress those of the peace party 
in Germany. Nor is the present military situa- 
tion one to give rise to any great hopes of a 
speedy victory. For a non-military man to at- 
tempt a diagnosis of that side of the question 
would undoubtedly be unwise, but a glance at 
the military map as it is at present would seem 
to show that Germany is far from a beaten na- 
tion. It would seem to be obvious that only by 
the strongest, most united effort in the military 



96 THE WORLD PERIL 

line can the balance of power be brought back 
to Europe or Germany be brought to reason. 

But there is one plan which has seemingly 
captured all German minds : those of the peace 
party as well as the annexationists. It is a plan 
so plausibly, so ostensibly reasonable that it has 
seemed to many Americans a perfectly possible 
settlement for the European difficulty. And yet 
within it, as it is brought forward by the German 
leaders, lurks no small danger to the peace of 
Europe and to the balance of power. This is 
the celebrated scheme for the constitution of 
"Mitteleuropa," a federation of states extend- 
ing from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf and in- 
cluding the present Germany, Austria-Hungary, 
Turkey, most if not all of the Balkan states and 
undoubtedly, in the present scheme, a reconsti- 
tuted kingdom of Poland. These states are not 
to form one government but are to act as a unit 
in questions of economic, military and foreign 
policy. One tariff, one federated and unified 
army, one policy toward outside states seem to 
be the characteristics of this new world group 
as sketched by its ablest advocate, Herr Nau- 
mann in his " Mitteleuropa, ' ' published about a 
year ago. Now against such a federation as this 
we can have no objection unless it in any way 
harms interests vital to us. In other words, we 
can feel no resentment if one state or group of 
states allies with another state or group unless 
thereby policies inimical to ours be strengthened 
or the balance of power disturbed to our dis- 
advantage. On these lines alone, then, we can 



BALANCE OF POWER 97 

criticize this new German scheme of Mittel- 
europa. 

Does it strengthen policies inimical to us? 
This will depend a great deal on the policy and 
position of the Central European Powers after 
the war. If Germany wins, the present policy 
will, doubtless, be continued and that this policy 
is inimical to the United States can hardly be 
denied. Remember the statement of Prince von 
Biilow, not primarily a Pan-German, that "the 
anger which is so widely felt in Germany against 
the American people with whom they had such 
friendly feelings is only too natural and com- 
prehensible. ' ' The Germans feel that our policy 
of neutrality has been hypocritical, that up to 
the outbreak of war we were really aiding the 
cause of the Allies, and for this alleged hypoc- 
risy and opposition they will desire, if possible, 
to secure revenge. If Germany is defeated her 
policy may change due to the necessities of a 
new position; and even if this policy of hos- 
tility continues defeat will greatly lessen the 
harm her revengeful spirit can do us. But if 
Mitteleuropa means a strengthening of the Ger- 
man strength and the present policies continue 
then, for us, Mitteleuropa cannot help but be 
a vital problem. 

Will it destroy the balance of power? In the 
first place it must be noted that in all questions 
dealing with foreign relations as well as in all 
military matters this new Mitteleuropa is to act 
as a unit ; indeed in dealing with its aspects as 
an international force it may be practically 



98 THE WOELD PERIL 

treated as one Power. And how strong will this 
new Power be? If we add to it the population 
of the new kingdom of Poland — and the an- 
nouncements made from German sources as to 
the new state leave no doubt but that it is to 
be considered as part of the new group forma- 
tion — it will possess about one hundred and sixty 
millions of population. What else in Europe 
can compare with it? France with forty mil- 
lions, Italy with several millions less, Eussia 
with about one hundred and seventy-five mil- 
lions, the British Empire with between two and 
three times as many. Outside of Europe the 
only Powers that can compare with it are the 
United States with one hundred million, Japan 
with fifty million and China with between three 
and four hundred million. But of the Powers 
which are strong enough to meet Mitteleuropa, 
Eussia and the British Empire, the first is and 
probably will be for some years to come a prey 
to civil dissensions and the second is too wide- 
spread for the rapid concentration necessary in 
the early part of a war. The United States is 
too far away to render effective help until some 
time has passed, and of the two Asiatic coun- 
tries, one is interested merely in the affairs of 
the Far East ; and the other, China, is too weak 
as an organized Power to count for much, for 
some time to come, among the nations of the 
world. It would appear that, for a term of 
years at least, Mitteleuropa would be the strong- 
est single force in world politics. 
But, it may be argued, this would not be a 



BALANCE OF POWER 99 

great danger because Mitteleuropa would be, 
from the very nature of its composition, an 
international and not a national force. For it 
would consist of Turks, Slavs, Italians, as well 
as Germans ; indeed the latter would represent 
a minority among the population. Far from 
being a cause of war it would be a mediating 
force between Slav and Teuton which would 
make for peace. Such is the argument as Nau- 
mann presents it. But is it absolutely true? 
It is not always the majority which rules in a 
state ; indeed as a general rule a minority, well 
organized, well educated and knowing clearly 
what it wants, can impose its will on a ma- 
jority, ill organized and lacking education and 
a plan of action. And such is the situation in 
the countries which would make up Mittel- 
europa. In only one, Bulgaria, would the Slav 
element be in a position to force concessions 
from the ruling German caste, and the Bulgarian 
Slav is hardly a good spokesman for his racial 
brothers in Austria and Germany. For with the 
south Slav he is a rival, and as yet he feels little 
interest in the fate of the Pole or the Czech. 
A few compensations in the economic sphere 
would probably win his support to a policy of 
Germanization in Poland or Austria. Mittel- 
europa would pass under the rule of Berlin be- 
cause there has been situated the directing force 
that has carried on the war which had created 
it; a victory of Germany in this war would al- 
most certainly mean the supremacy of Prussian- 
ism among the entire group. Indeed Naumann, 



100 THE WORLD PERIL 

although in guarded terms — for his book was 
not written for German consumption alone — 
practically takes this view. ' ' Mitteleuropa, ' ' he 
declares, "will in its kernel be German; it will 
of course use the German language as a medium 
of communication. ' ' And the very mixed feel- 
ings with which this book was received in the 
Austro-Hungarian Empire show that the think- 
ers of the Dual Monarchy seem to have their 
doubts as to where the leadership of the new 
group formation would be situated. 

We may take it as reasonably certain, then, 
that Mitteleuropa would be, in its external rela- 
tions, merely a projection of Germany from 
Hamburg to the Persian Gulf. That such a 
group formation would be a danger to the bal- 
ance of power and, therefore — if my preceding 
argument be accepted — to us, can hardly be 
doubted. How then is it to be defeated? If we 
consider that one of the greatest dangers in the 
whole scheme lies in its direction by Germany, 
then obviously our first task must be a defeat 
of Germany such as will teach to all the un- 
wisdom of following the lessons and guidance 
of the forces now ruling in Berlin. A defeat of 
Germany will probably mean the revival of fed- 
eralism in Austria and the gain of the non-Ger- 
man nationalities throughout Central Europe; 
the victory of Germany will probably mean the 
victory of Teutonism and the defeat of these 
hopes. 

But once Germany is defeated; what then? 
The usual method advocated is the division of 



BALANCE OF POWER 101 

the Austro-Hungarian Empire, parts going to 
Italy, Rumania, Serbia and Russia; the possi- 
ble formation of an independent kingdom of 
Bohemia, and the allowance of Hungary and 
Austria proper to go their own way, the former 
probably as an independent kingdom, the latter 
probably as part of the German Empire. But 
it is my personal conviction that such a plan 
would, in the end, prove unwise. Hungary 
would, as in the days of Andrassy, probably find 
that its sole dependence against Russia would 
be in alliance with Germany. Rumania would, 
very probably, follow the same course. Bul- 
garia, overshadowed by the new Serbia, would 
gravitate toward this Central European group, 
and Serbia, surrounded, would find herself in 
much the same position as in 1914. Such a pro- 
ject would restore the balance of power in 
Europe, but it is by no means certain that it 
would make for peace. 

The supposition on which the majority of the 
advocates of the foregoing scheme base their 
assumptions is that Austria is irretrievably 
bound to Germany. But is this true? Has the 
present Austrian policy been consistently fol- 
lowed in the Dual Monarchy? If we examine 
closely we will, I think, find that the present pol- 
icy has by no means been consistently followed 
since 1871, but that, on the contrary, there seem 
to have been two policies : one the policy, origi- 
nated by Andrassy and especially associated 
with Hungarian statesmen, looking to Germany 
for support and regarding Russia and Slavdom 



102 THE WORLD PERIL 

generally with hostility; the other, associated 
with various Polish and Czech statesmen, en- 
deavoring to steer a middle course between Rus- 
sia and Germany, and not particularly friendly 
or hostile to either. Moreover we will discover 
that this latter policy has never been without 
advocates in the Dual Monarchy, and finally that 
it seems to be the policy pursued by the present 
Emperor, Charles, since his accession. And it 
is to be further noted that this more interna- 
tional foreign policy will also bring with it a 
more reasonable method of treating the non- 
German elements within the Empire ; indeed the 
new Austrian policy seems to be directed toward 
greater cooperation with these elements in in- 
ternal matters. If these Slav elements can be 
strengthened so as to present a firm front 
against the German ones, then Mitteleiiropa 
will, very likely, present much less of a danger. 
A regenerated federalized Austria-Hungary 
might be a safe focus around which a safe Mit- 
teleuropa might form, but Germany, at present, 
can hardly be considered as such a one. 

It will thus be seen that there is here a prob- 
lem for the diplomatist as well as for the soldier. 
Just to what extent it will be found necessary 
to take away portions of the Austro-Hungarian 
Empire in the interests of nationality and of 
international right is difficult at this juncture 
to say and probably useless to discuss. But is 
it not possible to adopt the method advocated 
toward Germany by Lloyd-George and state 
that with such a regenerated and federalized 



BALANCE OF POWER 103 

Austria-Hungary it will be possible to deal 
far more generously than with an Austria- 
Hungary under Teuton control, as at present? 
For, in our case at least, the main objective of 
our attack is Germany: we are not even at war 
with the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and this 
ought to enable us to give to the latter more 
consideration when the time of settlement comes. 
There is another feature of the plan of Mittel- 
europa, as at present brought forward, which 
presents serious danger. This is the question 
of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles. A Mittel- 
europa extending from Hamburg to the Persian 
Gulf would be in a position to close, at will, 
every economic outlet of the Russian Empire in 
Europe except the port of Archangel, frozen 
during half the year. Again the inclusion of 
the new kingdom of Poland in the German group 
would take from Russia the greater part of its 
industrial area, situated in Russian Poland. 
There is a rapidly developing manufacturing 
district in southern Russia, but this does not, as 
yet, seem equal in importance to that of Russian 
Poland. Nor is a period of internal settlement, 
with all the unrest which attends it, a favorable 
time for industrial development, and it would 
appear that Russia is likely to pass through 
such a period of internal reorganization in the 
years following the war. If this German plan 
is carried out and Russia loses the control of her 
economic outlets as well as her largest industrial 
districts the result will almost certainly be to 
bring the new Russian Republic into a more or 



104 THE WORLD PERIL 

less complete economic dependence on the Cen- 
tral Powers. Germany, which before the war 
had such a strong economic hold on Russia, 
would easily build it up again after the conclu- 
sion of peace and this hold would be extremely 
difficult to shake off. Moreover if she seeks, as 
she will have to, other economic outlets, through 
Persia to the Persian Gulf or in the Far East, 
she will almost certainly collide with the inter- 
ests of Great Britain and would thereby be 
brought, as in the years before 1908, into po- 
litical as well as economic subjection to Mittel- 
europa. Such an outcome would, almost cer- 
tainly, upset the balance of power. 

We must insist then that this new Polish king- 
dom, if formed, shall have its closest bond with 
the Russian Republic which has an economic 
need of it and not with the German Empire, to 
which it would be merely a useless competitor. 
Also we must make sure that at least one of 
Russia's economic outlets, that through the 
Bosphorus and the Dardanelles, remains free to 
her. Two methods have been suggested in deal- 
ing with the latter problem : one that the Straits 
be handed over to Russia, the other that they 
be internationalized. The former solution is 
open to several grave difficulties. In the first 
place it has been renounced by the Russian Re- 
public itself in an official statement. Again it 
would undoubtedly stir up a large amount of 
hostile feeling in the Balkan states, notably in 
Bulgaria and Rumania. Finally the Germans 
claim that Russia would use her possession of 



BALANCE OF POWER 105 

Constantinople to close the Hamburg-Persian 
Gulf route to the East in favor of the more east- 
ward routes across Russia. But none of these 
objections can be brought against internation- 
alization as a solution. True, such a method 
has been a little discredited by later events, but, 
unless the world goes to war again in the next 
half century, which is doubtful, such an inter- 
national government at Constantinople would 
have some years in which to become firmly 
established. 

But it must be again stated that all these solu- 
tions are secondary at present. Against all of 
them Teutondom will fight, and until Teutondom 
is defeated there is no chance of their being 
carried out. Our first duty is to defeat Germany 
and then we can solve such problems in a way, 
it is to be hoped, to give satisfaction to all. 

Thus we have seen that every world plan, 
even the most moderate, thus far brought for- 
ward by official Germany contains danger to the 
balance of power in Europe and in the world. 
And if it be advocated that, to us, the problem 
of the balance of power is a vital one, then the 
war against Germany will have an added reason, 
the phrase "a world safe for democracy" will 
have an added meaning. For if we are a world 
Power, as a world Power we must think and act ; 
and these problems demand our serious con- 
sideration. 



CHAPTER V 

THE WORLD PERIL AND THE TWO 
AMERICAS 

Clifton R. Hall 

For nobody in the world is the progress of 
civilization more discouraging than for the un- 
neighborly man. If it is still too early in his- 
tory to contend that the hermit in his wilderness 
retreat and the castaway on his lonely island 
are conceivable to us today only as romantic 
figures of a past of somewhat doubtful authen- 
ticity, certainly there are few, and increasingly 
fewer, spots on earth capable of ministering to 
the comforts of man or of stimulating his am- 
bition or avarice, where the hermit can be guar- 
anteed his solitude or the castaway his oblivion. 
Relentlessly humanity fulfills its divine com- 
mission to multiply and possess the earth, and 
so inevitable is the process that one is fain to 
recognize a Providence that has made neighbor- 
liness a human instinct with direct purpose to 
safeguard the future. 

As with men, so with nations. The age of 
peoples living apart and undisturbed, or wan- 
dering over unoccupied regions where bound- 
aries were superfluous and sustenance provided 

106 



THE TWO AMERICAS 107 

by nature was to be had for the taking, are 
more remote in our thought but hardly less 
compatible with our standards of living than 
the times when winds and sails and flintlocks 
and horses were the reliance of peoples who 
now tremble for their safety despite the re- 
sources of steam and electricity, the submarine, 
the motor and high explosives. The children 
of men are all thrust, will they, nill they, into 
a single crib, where they may nestle together 
in harmony or scratch out one another's eyes, 
their freedom of choice being conditioned only 
by the necessity of recognizing that others are 
inevitably in the same crib, and at rather un- 
comfortably close quarters. 

For few nations in the world's history has 
the romantic, relatively untroubled period of 
isolation been so delightfully prolonged as for 
the United States. Our forefathers were intro- 
duced by fortune to a vast and rich domain, 
where boundless lands, huge forests and mighty 
rivers challenged the imagination and tenacity 
of generations to come and where only the sav- 
age, few and poorly equipped Indians — who, 
except as allies of white men, rarely showed 
formidable offensive strength — disputed their 
rule. Until well toward the end of the last cen- 
tury, Americans, battling with and subduing 
to their profit and comfort this great empire 
of nature, found neither strength nor leisure 
to turn their attention elsewhere, and their geo- 
graphical isolation became a sort of ideal pro- 
vincialism, exalted by dreams of their infant 



108 THE WORLD PERIL 

country's transcendent maturity and by satis- 
faction in the importance of their own labors as 
a constructive means to so noble an end. 

In this isolation they were confirmed, more- 
over, after their successful revolution from 
England, by an appreciation of their present 
feebleness. The young nation, exhausted by the 
struggle, unskilled in government, empty in 
pocket, insignificant in population, needed time 
and experience to order its course, solve its 
problems and develop its enormous potential- 
ities; and it is no wonder that its leaders, con- 
templating the fierce strife of the European 
monarchies for each other 's possessions and the 
ruthless gobbling up of the little states by their 
great neighbors, looked upon the hundreds of 
leagues of ocean tossing between their continent 
and Europe as the " aegis of democracy" and 
presented the principle of isolation to their 
countrymen as a lamp divinely lighted to guide 
their footsteps along the highway of history. 

In this spirit Washington addressed to his 
fellow citizens his classic message of farewell : 

"The great rule of conduct for us in regard 
to foreign nations is, in extending our commer- 
cial relations, to have with them as little political 
connection as possible. . . . Why, by interweav- 
ing our destiny with that of any part of Europe, 
entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils 
of European ambition, rivalship, interest or 
caprice 1 ' ' 

Jefferson, chief apostle of American democ- 
racy, harped constantly on the same string : 



THE TWO AMERICAS 109 

"Determined as we are to avoid, if possible, 
wasting the energies of our people in war and 
destruction, we shall avoid implicating our- 
selves with the Powers of Europe, even in sup- 
port of principles which we mean to pursue. ' ' 

And again: 

"We have a perfect horror at everything 
like connecting ourselves with the politics of 
Europe. ' ' 

Similar sentiments were reiterated by most 
of the fathers whose foresight best deserved 
the nation's heed, and the principle of isolation 
became ingrained in the American character. 

Regarding the possessions of European Pow- 
ers that remained in America at the close of the 
Revolution, the same policy commended itself. 
Aside from the British possessions in Canada 
and the West Indies, regarded, on the whole, 
as safe and economically profitable neighbors, 
the great bulk of the western hemisphere was 
in the hands of Spain, whose immense colonial 
empire stretched over both continents from the 
Mississippi to the Pacific and from the Great 
Lakes to Cape Horn, including Florida, the en- 
tire coastline of the Gulf of Mexico, and the 
principal islands of the West Indies, and ex- 
cluding nothing of great importance except 
Brazil, which belonged to Portugal. 

Toward this enormous institution — the Span- 
ish Empire of the Indies — the people of the 
United States were complacent. Ardent demo- 
crats, they could not, of course, sympathize with 
a system of government which saddled upon its 



110 THE WOELD PERIL 

colonists a bureaucracy— a graded organization 
of Spanish-born officials — far less representa- 
tive, less efficient and more oppressive than that 
of England, which had driven them to revolt; 
nor could they, who had writhed and protested 
under the British trade regulations, condone a 
commercial system that exploited and wrung 
its subjects in America for the profit of the 
king's exchequer and of favored mercantile in- 
terests in distant Spain ; but, as shrewdly prac- 
tical countrymen of Yankee Doodle, they saw 
readily enough the advantage to themselves of 
having as their neighbor decrepit old Spain 
rather than some vigorous Power with an ag- 
gressive imperial policy. The infant Hercules 
could well afford to let Spain sleep on next 
door, while he toughened his sinews and took 
on wisdom; then, if his destiny pointed to the 
Pacific or the Gulf of Mexico, as he was begin- 
ning to fancy it might, the matter could be at- 
tended to. With regard to Central America, 
Panama and far away South America he had 
little knowledge and no ambitions whatever. 

But Spain was not permitted to slumber while 
the young giant grew to man's estate. The ter- 
rific explosion of the French Eevolution shook 
all Europe wide awake, and, as its last phase, 
came the parvenu conqueror Napoleon, irrev- 
erently erasing the boundaries of old mon- 
archies and shaping them to his designs of 
world dominion. No imperial scheme could 
possibly overlook Spain, rich and ripe for the 
plucking, and in 1807 Napoleon's veterans 



THE TWO AMERICAS 111 

marched across the Pyrenees and a new and 
pregnant chapter in American history began; 
for the subversion of Spain meant the disinte- 
gration of her empire in America. 

The Spanish colonies rose in revolt, a revolt 
with more than the usual complexity of causes 
attending popular upheavals — patriotic Span- 
iards against the French rulers arbitrarily im- 
posed upon them, disgruntled American-born 
Creoles against the overbearing Spanish-born 
official class, champions of free trade and open 
markets against the old, deadening commercial 
monopoly — but in its final stages it became 
quite definitely a revolution against the sov- 
ereignty of Spain herself. The reason for this 
is to be found in Europe. 

Napoleon's grandiose schemes of universal 
empire had brought about his ruin. Driven by 
the instinct of self-preservation, the European 
monarchs sank their differences with one an- 
other, combined against the common enemy, 
crushed him at last and, with thanksgiving in 
their hearts for their deliverance, set about re- 
storing and safeguarding their tottering thrones 
that had so nearly crashed down in ruin. Thus 
originated the 1 1 Holy Alliance, " x a league of the 
rulers of Russia, Prussia, Austria and France, 
united to "put an end to the system of repre- 
sentative governments in, whatever country it 

i The term ' ' Holy Alliance ' ' is here used loosely to desig- 
nate the permanent (Quadruple) alliance which England re- 
pudiated, rather than the original fantastic Holy Alliance of 
Czar Alexander I, with whose principles England declared her- 
self in sympathy. 



112 THE WORLD PERIL 

may exist,' ' to "prevent its being introduced in 
those countries where it is not yet known" and 
to uphold the "legitimate" sovereignty of those 
royal families ordained of God and divinely 
appointed to the governance of men. Under 
its auspices popular movements in Italy and 
Spain were snuff ed out without mercy and, en- 
couraged by its support, King Ferdinand VII 
of Spain, contemptible in character and in in- 
tellect, entered upon a policy of reactionary 
absolutism for the kingdom and colonies under 
his rule. His unenlightened action was the coup 
de grace to loyalty to the Spanish monarchy in 
America, where the revolution promptly gained 
an elan it had not had before. Ferdinand's 
cause came to depend more and more upon the 
inadequate force of soldiers sent from Spain, 
and by 1822 his colonial empire had practically 
ceased to exist and the infatuated monarch could 
only turn weakly and expectantly to the deus 
ex machina in the person of the Holy Alliance 
and pitifully beg his lost possessions at its 
hands. 

What might have been the fate of the new- 
born democracies, had they stood alone or with 
only the United States at their back, to defy 
the conquerors of Napoleon, may be conjectured. 
But, fortunately for America, England derived 
no comfort from the prospect of a crusade 
against representative government or of burly 
European autocrats elbowing her overseas col- 
onies and closing South American ports to her 
trade; and, to the delight of our anxious ad- 



THE TWO AMERICAS 113 

ministration, the British foreign office took the 
initiative in suggesting the identity of Eng- 
land's interests with our own and inviting us 
to a joint declaration against interference by 
the Holy Alliance in American affairs. Presi- 
dent James Monroe might have been pardoned 
had he embraced the tempting proposal without 
qualification, but his astute Secretary of State, 
John Quincy Adams,. perceiving that England's 
self-interest absolutely assured us of her sup- 
port, urged the advantages of a separate pro- 
nouncement by the United States alone, which, 
instead of presenting us to the world as a mere 
" cock-boat in the wake of the British man-of- 
war,' ' would preserve our traditional policy of 
"no alliances," leave our hands free for the 
future and win us international prestige with 
no attendant risk. Accordingly, on December 
2, 1823, the President's message announced that 
the American continents "are henceforth not 
to be considered as subjects for future coloniza- 
tion by any European powers," that we should 
regard any attempt on their part "to extend 
their system to any portion of this hemisphere 
as dangerous to our peace and safety," and 
that "we could not view any interposition for 
the purpose of oppressing" the new republics 
"or controlling in any other manner their des- 
tiny, by any European power, in any other light 
than as the manifestation of an unfriendly dis- 
position toward the United States." 

This was the famous Monroe Doctrine. It is 
doubtless true that, if its announcement seemed 



114 THE WORLD PEEIL 

to dissipate successfully the menace of the Holy 
Alliance against America, the true explanation 
of that happy result is to be found rather in 
British ships and guns than in an American 
paper pronunciamento. It may also be admit- 
ted that the doctrine originated primarily in 
selfishness rather than in altruism, that our 
statesmen were thinking more of the security 
of the United States than of the liberty of the 
struggling colonists. Still, the fact remains 
that, thus early in her national existence, the 
United States appeared before the world as the 
avowed champion of American democracy and 
of the right of the peoples of the western hemi- 
sphere to work out their own institutions in 
their own way. 

In Latin America these evidences of the sup- 
port and good will of the democrats of the north 
fell on no sterile ground. Enthusiasm for the 
United States was universal, the names of her 
Eevolutionary heroes were on all lips, the con- 
stitutions of the new states, to be imposed on 
an incongruous citizenry of Latins, Indians and 
blacks, copied with flattering if regrettable fi- 
delity the fundamental laws of a people schooled 
for generations in the intricacies of "checks 
and balances,' ' and in 1824, when the " libera- 
tor,' ' Simon Bolivar, pursuing his dream of a 
league of free American republics, proposed the 
first Pan-American congress of history, to be 
held at Panama for the purpose of formulating 
a common policy with regard to American af- 
fairs, an urgent invitation was sent to Wash- 
ington. 



THE TWO AMERICAS 115 

Unhappily, the faith of Bolivar and his com- 
patriots in the readiness of the United States 
to preside over and to protect, as an elder sis- 
ter, a happy family of American democracies 
was doomed to disappointment. In truth, the 
United States was not worthy at that time to 
pose as sponsor for a league of freedom, for 
she herself, despite the lofty sentiments of her 
Declaration of Independence, was polluted by 
slavery. The half century of struggle between 
the North and South had already begun, and 
the nation's counsels were conducted and her 
policies determined with that issue always in 
mind. Its baleful influence on American demo- 
cratic solidarity appeared at once in the pro- 
tests of Southern Congressmen against sending 
delegates to the Panama Congress, upon the 
ground that that body was to include negroes 
in its membership and that among its projects 
was the recognition of black Haiti as a free 
state and the emancipation of Cuba and Porto 
Eico from the tyranny of Spain. Could their 
own negroes be kept reconciled to bondage, they 
asked, when they connived at investing black 
skinned islanders with the rights of man? So 
long did they succeed in delaying the departure 
of our delegates that when they finally reached 
Panama the congress had adjourned and the 
name of the United States had ceased to be one 
to conjure with in the cause of democratic Pan- 
Americanism. 

This deplorable episode was but the beginning 
of a long period of estrangement, ranging from 



116 THE WOKLD PERIL 

indifference to open hostility, between the United 
States and her southern neighbors. The full 
vigor and genius of our people were turned to 
the occupation and development of the great 
West and pace for pace with the movement of 
settlers into the new land went the eternal con- 
troversy over slavery. The Southern champions 
in Congress, foreseeing and dreading the over- 
whelming of their cherished institution by the 
preponderance of free labor in the West, fought 
the battle for slavery over again whenever the 
admission of a new State to the Union was pro- 
posed, and, when their defeat appeared unavoid- 
able in the territory then possessed by the 
nation, raised the cry, "more land for slavery I" 
The South became avowedly imperialistic. 
Slave holders poured across the southern border 
into the Mexican territory of Texas, defied the 
Mexican laws against slavery, and finally, in 
1836, threw off the rule of Mexico and knocked 
at the door of the Union. In 1846 pro-slavery 
interests forced on Mexico, exhausted by inter- 
nal strife and helpless to protect herself, as 
unjust a war as ever a great nation waged 
against a smaller, and ravished from her Cali- 
fornia, New Mexico and Arizona. Cuba also, 
the richest jewel remaining to Spain in Amer- 
ica, kindled their covetous eyes. Filibusters, 
equipped in our Gulf States, regardless of inter- 
national obligations and municipal law, har- 
assed her coasts and towns, official offers of 
purchase to Spain were couched in almost dic- 
tatorial terms, and the climax was reached when, 



THE TWO AMERICAS 117 

in 1854, the American ministers to England, 
France and Spain — two of them slaveholders 
and the third devoted to Southern interests — 
met at Ostend in Belgium and united in a mani- 
festo advising the United States, in case Spain 
proved indisposed to part with Cuba, to " wrest 
it from her if we possess the power.' ' 

Our Civil War, by abolishing slavery, de- 
stroyed the damning inconsistency in our de- 
mocracy, but neither then nor afterward was 
anything accomplished toward cementing the 
broken links of Pan- Americanism. The re- 
deemed Union, after the necessary reconstruc- 
tion, entered upon a marvellous era of material 
development — the age of big business, trusts, 
railroad extension, wars between capital and 
labor, controversies over the tariff and the cur- 
rency. Hence it emerged, toward the end of 
the nineteenth century, full of strength, re- 
source and optimism, conscious that its internal 
problems were well on the way to a solution 
and its natural wealth in process of exploitation, 
with a keen sense of its destiny, the eye of an 
entrepreneur alert for new avenues to useful- 
ness, progress and profit, and a complacent ap- 
preciation of its significance as the home of 
freedom and opportunity for all the world and 
as the eldest and most successful expositor of 
the success of democracy in a great nation, and 
with a sincere benevolence, not without some 
tincture of superiority, toward oppressed and 
unfortunate peoples on whom the blessings of 
freedom had been bestowed in less measure. 



118 THE WORLD PERIL 

This splendid period of growth and coordina- 
tion of national resources had one inevitable 
result — it tore away whatever remained of our 
chrysalis of isolation and precipitated us into 
the mid-current of world affairs. Already we 
were the world's greatest producers of raw ma- 
terials, with a surplus beyond our own needs 
seeking a market ; and when we conned the les- 
sons of our census and the reports of our im- 
migration bureau it required no effort of the 
imagination to prefigure the time when the yield 
of our fields and mountains would be inadequate 
to supply our teeming population and when our 
manufactures, multiplied enormously in re- 
sponse to increased demands, might be ex- 
changed abroad for the foods and minerals of 
other lands. The economic law of interdepend- 
ence among nations made us a world Power 
and constrained us to dig the Panama Canal. 

While still a weak and provincial nation, the 
United States had been glad to subscribe to any 
arrangement with European states that would 
save the face of the Monroe Doctrine and secure 
us equal rights with others to use the projected 
waterway. Now, however, that we were indis- 
putably the paramount Power in America, with 
long coastlines on both oceans, containing har- 
bors for our vessels of war and trade, any trans- 
isthmian canal must become the strategic centre 
for our commerce and our naval strategy — in 
the words of President Hayes, "part of the 
coastline of the United States" — as necessary 
for us to control as the capital of our Govern- 



THE TWO AMERICAS 119 

ment or the funds of our treasury. And, need- 
less to say, the control of the canal implied 
control also of the principal routes by which it 
could be reached — the great sea lanes between 
the islands of the Caribbean and important posi- 
tions commanding its termini in both oceans. 

Thus consideration for our future as a world 
Power urged us southward, into closer and 
closer contact with our one time admirers, the 
Latin Americans, whose sentiments toward us, 
however, had undergone, not without reason, 
a process of refrigeration and who now re- 
garded us with distrust as conscienceless inter- 
lopers, intent on securing plenty of room for 
ourselves by a resolute elbowing policy. 

Our initial plunge into the unfamiliar waters 
of the Caribbean did not allay their apprehen- 
sions. Our war with Spain in 1898 was fought 
from a variety of motives, but of the dominant 
one — sympathy for the outraged Cubans (and 
that it was so nobody who remembers the senti- 
ments or has read the newspapers of that year 
can doubt) — our people had no reason to be 
ashamed. Still, other less unselfish impulses 
appearing in the background appealed to our 
startled neighbors, and to Europe as well, as 
more in accord with our reputed national 
shrewdness and materialism, and the terms of 
peace served but too well to bear out their sus- 
picions, for we proceeded not only to pocket 
Porto Eico and the Philippines but to force 
upon Cuba, for whose liberties we professed 
to have been wielding the righteous sword, a 



120 THE WOELD PERIL 

tutelage which conditioned her nominally de- 
clared sovereignty by our own conception of 
her needs, and to exact a substantial recom- 
pense for our services in the form of naval 
bases on her soil. 

The end of the war brought the American 
people, somewhat to their surprise and almost 
against their will, face to face with the fact that 
their old practice of aloofness from others ' con- 
cerns had been relegated forever to the nation's 
collection of outgrown antiquities. Henceforth 
our policies were to be cast in an international 
mould. 

Our first step was impossible to mistake. We 
must build and own the canal. England, with 
whom we had an embarrassing treaty on the 
subject, was told that, controlling as she did 
the Suez waterway, she could not in propriety 
insist upon rights in ' ' sl canal and a half. ' ' Con- 
vinced, less perhaps by the force of our logic 
than by her desire for our friendship, in view 
of the menacing rise of German maritime power, 
she obligingly withdrew, and "the Hay-Paunce- 
fote treaty [1901] was a turning point in the 
history of the West Indies, in that it was a 
formal recognition of the transference of naval 
supremacy in the Caribbean from Great Britain 
to the United States." The Panama route was 
decided upon, and although Colombia, sovereign 
over that territory, interposed obstacles to our 
impatient will, our Presidential chair was occu- 
pied by a "man of action,' ' and Mr. Roosevelt 
"took Panama while Congress debated." 



THE TWO AMERICAS 121 

Americans whose faith in the unswerving 
justice of the United States to weaker nations 
has been fortified by the Roosevelt and John 
Hay versions of what occurred in Panama in 
1903 will do well to consult an unbiased his- 
torian's account of those events. Here it needs 
only to be observed in passing that the Panama 
revolution was projected in this country and 
anticipated with equanimity by our Government 
several weeks before it actually broke out ; that 
under a more than doubtful construction of an 
old treaty dating from 1846 — a construction re- 
pudiated by Colombia and by Latin Americans 
generally — we resorted to forcible means to ob- 
struct the operations of the Colombian troops 
attempting to suppress the rebels ; that in rec- 
ognizing the Republic of Panama only three 
days after its declaration of independence we 
violated principles regarding recognition which 
we ourselves had announced with unction in the 
case of the revolt of the Spanish colonies and 
for a far less heinous disregard of which, with 
reference to the recognition of the belligerency 
of the Confederacy in our Civil War, we had 
bitterly denounced England; and that the prin- 
cipal justification alleged for our action — that 
the canal was a world necessity, the enjoyment 
of which by humanity self-seeking officials of 
a single turbulent nation could not be permitted 
to prevent — must be thrown out of court as ir- 
relevant, since the question at issue with Colom- 
bia was not the granting or denial of the desired 
concessions, but rather the amount of money 



122 THE WOKLD PEEIL 

we were to pay for them. It is at least a profit- 
able reflection whether a nation that spent over 
half a billion dollars, composed in considerable 
part of pensions and "pork," in the year 1903, 
might not well have afforded to add an addi- 
tional item of a few millions for the sake of 
avoiding all appearance of injustice and con- 
serving the good will of the people of a whole 
continent. 

Whether Mr. Eoosevelt or the Colombians 
had the right of it, the Panama episode did 
more than any other event in our history to 
arouse against us the resentment, distrust and 
fear of Latin Americans. To them we seemed 
to stand revealed in our true character — the 
"Colossus of the North,' ' bestriding both the 
Americas and appropriating them to our de- 
signs. Their alarm increased when, in 1906, 
we intervened in Cuba to repair the creaking 
machinery of government. They whispered sar- 
donically that Uncle Sam was removing his dis- 
guise as "general benef actor* • and preparing 
soullessly to gobble the next morsel that invited 
his perennial appetite, and surprise and mysti- 
fication followed our prompt withdrawal after 
order was restored. 

Not only in the Americas did the stretching 
of Uncle Sam's limbs occasion discomfort. The 
great commercial nations looked askance at our 
growing ambitions and extended activities. Par- 
ticularly so did Germany. Coming too late into 
the family of nations to share in the partition 
of North America and Africa into colonial do- 



THE TWO AMERICAS 123 

mains, no nation was more conscious of its im- 
perial destiny or more alive to the necessity of 
providing homes for its population and markets 
for its products. If Germany was to take the 
forward place in world affairs to which her na- 
tional character and ambitions assigned her, 
some resource must be found to offset the handi- 
cap of restricted territory. All the world knows 
that it was supplied by perfection of organiza- 
tion, by the application of the uncanny German 
genius for taking pains, sentimentalized by an 
unwearying propaganda devoted to the glorifi- 
cation of German efficiency, and rhapsodized 
into a crusader 's vision of the diffusion of Teu- 
tonic "Kultur." Thus equipped, she entered 
the battle for the world's wealth and the world's 
power, her producing, selling and fiscal organ- 
izations combined with intricate perfection, her 
young subjects trained as specialized agents for 
the conquest of new markets for her com- 
modities, her capital ventured in large amounts 
and often at dangerously speculative rates in 
investments calculated to win her credit and 
consequently business abroad, and behind all 
the purse and the strong arm of her centralized 
Government. Coincidently with the expansion 
of her trade proceeded the augmentation of her 
navy, regarded as the necessary guarantee of 
her success. In the early years of the twentieth 
century the mushroom growth of both brought 
consternation to her rivals; all of them save 
England were speedily distanced, and she, de- 
spite extraordinary exertions, had ample reason 
for concern. 



124 THE WOELD PERIL 

No field of expansion afforded more attractive 
possibilities than the American; and German 
money, German goods and German immigrants 
were already pouring into the most promising 
localities. In every respect, the policy of the 
United States seemed a bogey to German ambi- 
tions, and most intolerable of all was the Mon- 
roe Doctrine, denying her forever a single 
square foot of territory in the hemisphere. 

No one familiar with German habits of 
thought and "practical" methods could enter- 
tain a doubt as to how the empire would deal 
with such a situation. It was resolved, as a 
matter of course, to defer to the United States 
and to the Monroe Doctrine only so far as ex- 
pediency might dictate ; and expediency, to the 
German mind, has usually been measured in 
terms of battleships and ordnance. In 1898 
the sentiments of the Kaiser appeared in his 
efforts to effect a coalition of European Powers 
to compel us to relax our pressure on Spain and 
in his reported observation: "If I had had a 
larger fleet, I would have taken Uncle Sam by 
the scruff of the neck. ' ' When Dewey, victorious 
over the Spaniards, occupied Manila Bay, a 
German squadron, present ostensibly to protect 
German interests against the insurgents, thrust 
itself between our ships and the town and ren- 
dered itself so obnoxious as to draw from Dewey 
the outburst : ' • Tell Admiral Diederichs that if 
he wants a fight he can have it right now!" 
The first German- American armed conflict might 
well have materialized forthwith, had not the 



THE TWO AMERICAS 125 

behavior of the British commander, also on the 
scene, conveyed to the Germans a distinct im- 
pression of Anglo-American amity. 

Some day a historian will tell the interesting 
story of the rapprochement between England 
and the United States which has now produced 
such gratifying results, and he may well be able 
to show a relationship between increasing Brit- 
ish amenities to us and the rise of the German 
menace. An outstanding affection for us has 
not always been a British peculiarity. How- 
ever that may be, the advantages to England 
of America 's friendship during those disturbing 
years were obvious, and, in the light of what 
we already know of Germany's intentions to- 
ward us and our own blind helplessness to pro- 
tect ourselves, we may confess with gratitude 
that we have by no means least benefited by 
the Anglo-Saxon family reunion. 

The Manila episode was only the first rustle 
of the rising hurricane. Judicious German 
loans to impecunious Latin American countries, 
which the latter proved providentially unable 
to pay, were recurrent pretexts for the employ- 
ment of Teuton strong arm methods, and most 
disquieting ones for Uncle Sam. On one oc- 
casion, in 1902, the Kaiser's grip upon the collar 
of recalcitrant Venezuela was broken only by 
President Roosevelt's threat to dispatch Ad- 
miral Dewey to the scene of action. Again, in 
1907, the claims of Germany and other Euro- 
pean states upon the bankrupt treasury of Santo 
Domingo forced the President to one of the 



126 THE WOELD PEEIL 

most significant extensions of the Monroe Doc- 
trine that has ever been made. By agreement 
with the debtor state, officials from the United 
States were appointed to administer the Do- 
minican customs in the interest of foreign cred- 
itors, upon the principle that "we must make 
it evident that we do not intend to permit the 
Monroe Doctrine to be used by any nation on 
this continent as a shield to protect it from the 
consequences of its own misdeeds against for- 
eign nations," and, in cases of wrong doing or 
impotence of American states, causing just 
grievances to their creditors, the United States 
may be forced "to the exercise of an interna- 
tional police power.' ' 

Such disconcerting experiences as these at 
length convinced our people of the necessity of 
formulating a practical American program. Of 
recent years, Latin American cartoonists have 
been fond of depicting the long, striding legs, 
longer arms and clutching, bony fingers of im- 
perialistic Uncle Sam; but, with the evidence 
all in, the worst that can fairly be said against 
our policy is that it has concerned itself (1) 
with the reassertion of a somewhat amplified 
Monroe Doctrine — amplified to meet new exi- 
gencies as they have arisen; (2) with the as- 
sumption of an amount of control over small, 
irresponsible Latin American countries suffi- 
cient to anticipate the designs of ambitious 
European Powers on their integrity; and (3) 
with the creation of a scientific system of de- 
fences for the canal, including the command of 



THE TWO AMERICAS 127 

the principal sea routes into the Caribbean and 
the occupation by ourselves, or the exclusion 
of rival nations from, the important naval bases 
near its Atlantic and Pacific termini. 

These three elements in our policy are, in- 
deed, closely interrelated and may be thought 
of as parts of one big plan — the perfection of 
the defences and the insurance of the security 
of the United States, regarding our West India 
islands and the Canal Zone as integral factors 
in a single problem. There have been, since 
the Roosevelt pronouncement regarding Santo 
Domingo, two significant extensions of the Mon- 
roe Doctrine. The first, in 1912, occasioned by 
the rumor that Japanese commercial interests, 
closely allied with the Japanese Government, 
were negotiating with Mexico for concessions 
of territory on Magdalena Bay in Lower Cali- 
fornia, was the " Lodge resolution" to the effect 
that "when any harbor or other place in the 
American continents is so situated that the oc- 
cupation thereof for naval or military purposes 
might threaten the communications or the 
safety of the United States, the Government 
of the United States could not see without grave 
concern the possession of such harbor or other 
place by any corporation or association which 
has such a relation to another Government, not 
American, as to give that Government practical 
power or control for naval or military pur- 
poses." 

The second is still more interesting. For 
years the immense oil fields of Mexico and 



/ 



128 THE WORLD PERIL 



northern South America have been, like other 
deposits of raw materials in Latin America, the 
basis of heavy investments of foreign capital. 
A new international significance has recently 
attached to oil, from the fact that it is being 
substituted for coal as fuel for battleships, and, 
at no very distant date, oiling stations and the 
control of oil supplies must figure largely in 
the estimates of naval experts. Thus the ques- 
tion of the control of American oil properties 
becomes a matter of concern in our plans of 
national defence, and when in 1913 it was 
learned that the great British firm of Pearson 
and Son, already heavily interested in Mexican 
oil, was concluding negotiations with the Colom- 
bian Government which gave it a monopoly of 
valuable deposits in that country, with the right 
to construct pipe lines, railroads and docks, our 
Government was aroused and expressed its dis- 
pleasure so strongly that the Pearson projects 
were abandoned. The Monroe Doctrine was 
deftly fitted to the situation by President Wilson 
in his speech at Mobile, in which he declared: 
i ' States that are obliged, because their territory 
does not lie within the main field of modern 
enterprise and action, to grant concessions are 
in this condition, that foreign interests are apt 
to dominate their domestic affairs. . . . What 
these states are going to seek, therefore, is an 
emancipation from the subordination, which has 
been inevitable, to foreign enterprise. . . . The 
United States . . . must regard it as one of the 
duties of friendship to see that from no quarter 



THE TWO AMERICAS 129 

are material interests made superior to human 
liberty and national opportunity. ' ' 

In the turbulent little republics of Central 
America and the West Indies we have, of late 
years, constantly interfered and taken upon our- 
selves new burdens, with slight advantage to 
ourselves, for the simple reason that we were 
compelled to do so or to hand over regions 
strategically vital to us to our most formidable 
rivals, especially Germany. The world is just 
beginning to comprehend and to shiver as it 
should at the story of German machinations; 
and of all the reckless sleepers saved by grace 
rather than by prescience, Uncle Sam has as 
good reason as any for self-gratulation. 

An excellent illustration is Haiti. That negro 
island republic, endowed by nature with a pro- 
fusion of riches, and endowed by man with 
ignorance, improvidence and chronic revolution, 
has been for a century a pathetic instance of 
neglected possibilities. Once a colony of France 
and still French in speech, its finances were 
controlled, until seven years ago, by a French 
banking corporation. German interests, how- 
ever, were active there, as everywhere else, and 
in 1910 were powerful enough to secure a re- 
organization of the bank which would give them 
a share in the country's fiscal affairs. The 
French Government, as nervous at the prospect 
of embarking in such a venture with Germans 
as their sole associates as Red Riding Hood 
had reason to be in her woodland walk with the 
wolf, insisted on having a third party along, 



130 THE WORLD PERIL 

and the final adjustment, on its face, gave 
Frenchmen fifty per cent, of the stock, Amer- 
icans forty per cent., and Germans only ten per 
cent. ; but there was, perhaps, some significance 
in the fact that the principal American holders 
bore unmistakable German names. Be that as 
it may, the bank was not the last word in the 
story. In 1914 and 1915, Haiti was convulsed 
by two of her habitual revolutions and when 
the smoke had cleared away it appeared that 
the revolutionary leaders had contracted loans 
with German banks bearing such picturesque 
rates of interest as 35 and 45% per cent, per 
annum, with the Government revenues pledged 
for their repayment. More important than this 
was the intimation that came to the United 
States that the German minister had negotiated 
with the Haitian Government an arrangement 
whereby one of the considerations for German 
financial assistance was to be the grant to Ger- 
mans of the right to construct a commercial 
coaling station at Mole St. Nicholas, at the 
northwestern extremity of the island, an im- 
portant stategic site commanding the Windward 
Passage, the highroad to Panama. The alarm 
felt in our Government circles at this swoop of 
the German eagle toward an eyrie in America, 
where one of the roads to the canal would be 
directly under his eye and claws, may be imag- 
ined, and it was doubtless due to energetic pro- 
tests from Washington that nothing came of 
the plot. 

But the end was not yet. The bank and the 



THE TWO AMERICAS 131 

loans gave the Germans an ideal lever for their 
Haitian diplomacy, and when, in 1914, Presi- 
dent Theodore's skyrocket financiering had in- 
volved his country in economic chaos and the 
gold in the Haitian bank had been spirited to 
New York in a United States gunboat for safe 
keeping, the French and German Governments 
approached Washington with the proposition 
that Haiti's finances required regulating and 
that their interests there entitled them to par- 
ticipate in the work. The French communica- 
tion was polite, but the sinister scowl and the 
clenched fist appeared unmistakably in the Ger- 
man representation, the language of which set 
forth the unconcern of German public opinion 
with any American tenderness for a traditional 
doctrine and concluded with the assertion that 
Germany " would not understand" any arrange- 
ment that excluded her from a settlement of 
Haitian affairs. 

The United States, at last thoroughly aroused, 
replied to both France and Germany that she 
admitted no exceptions to her general policy that 
independent American nations were not to be in- 
terfered with by European governments. At this 
juncture came the great war, and Germany's en- 
ergies were fully occupied elsewhere. Just what 
sort of reply our defiance of the Imperial Gov- 
ernment would have brought us under different 
circumstances is a shiver inducing speculation 
for those of us whose faith is not pinned to the 
threadbare aphorism that " America has never 
lost a war." 



132 THE WORLD PERIL 

Meanwhile Haiti had become a welter of revo- 
lution and murder, one president after another 
flitting disconcertingly across the stage and each 
picking up, in his course, whatever cash hap- 
pened to be in sight. When missions from the 
United States had failed to effect any arrange- 
ment concerning the finances, utter anarchy 
reigned, French marines had been landed at 
Cape Haitien to protect French interests, and 
a mob had invaded the French legation at Port- 
au-Prince to drag out and assassinate President 
Guillaume-Sam, the United States took forcible 
control of the situation. She had no alternative. 
Haiti must be shaken out and made fit for re- 
spectable society by somebody, and unless we 
were willing to assume the unpleasant duty our- 
selves we could not, in common sense, go on 
denying to other interested parties the right to 
use the rod. Our marines accomplished the cor- 
rective process with a minimum of pain to all 
concerned and, by a treaty negotiated in Sep- 
tember, 1915, Haiti was placed in probationary 
leading strings, the collection of her customs 
and the disbursement of her revenues assumed 
by the United States, and her so-called police 
system replaced by a native constabulary re- 
cruited, drilled and officered by Americans, the 
arrangement to remain in force for ten years 
"and further for another term of ten years if, 
for specific reasons presented by either of the 
high contracting parties, the purpose of this 
treaty has not been fully accomplished. ' ' 

The story of Haiti is the most melodramatic 



THE TWO AMERICAS 133 

chapter, but a thoroughly characteristic one, in 
the history of our relations with the Caribbean 
countries. Santo Domingo, Haiti's neighbor, 
has been continuously under our wing since 
1907, when alarm at the attitude of her foreign 
creditors first drove us to assume the post of 
nursemaid ; and, in consequence of recent lapses 
from the path of order and virtue, is now being 
reclaimed by military government, backed by 
the rifles of United States marines. 

Of the little republics of Central America, 
Nicaragua has enlisted our peculiar interest, 
because her territory contains the logical route 
for the second isthmian canal which some day 
will be built. Here also the foreign bogey has 
appeared, and here, from 1893 to 1910, its de- 
signs were facilitated by the rule of the in- 
famous tyrant-dictator Zelaya, a sort of prince 
of desperadoes, who for seventeen years ter- 
rorized, exploited, robbed, blackmailed and mur- 
dered his countrymen, executed citizens of the 
United States, kept neighboring governments in 
a turmoil of apprehension and ruined the coun- 
try by concessions to foreigners, pledging her 
resources for loans which he and his henchmen 
squandered until, when the blight of his pres- 
ence was at length removed, Nicaragua lay help- 
less to meet the claims of the European Powers 
which were at her throat demanding immediate 
compliance. Only our intervention and our 
promise that she would meet her obligations 
saved her and, at the instance of her own rulers, 
experts from the United States undertook the 



134 THE WORLD PERIL 

rehabilitation of her government and finances. 
A new revolutionary outbreak led to the land- 
ing of marines to keep the peace. Our finan- 
ciers, with justifiable caution, declined to risk 
considerable sums in the country without posi- 
tive assurance that no more financial orgies of 
the Zelaya brand would be staged there; and, 
to furnish them the necessary guarantees and 
for the good of all concerned, the United States 
and Nicaragua concluded a treaty in 1915, by 
which we placed $3,000,000 to her credit in safe 
banks, and received in return a perpetual right 
to build and maintain an interoceanic canal by 
the Nicaragua route and a ninety-nine year, re- 
newable lease of the Corn Islands, guarding the 
Atlantic terminus, and the Bay of Fonseca, the 
Pacific gateway of the proposed new "ditch." 

Prospects of similar salutary tutelage over 
Honduras and Salvador have so far miscarried, 
but the future may well hold further responsi- 
bilities for us in Central America. 

It must be clear that the key to our "im- 
perial" policy, including our salvage of ship- 
wrecked American states and our brandishing 
of the Monroe Doctrine in the faces of foreign 
nations, is our concern to safeguard, for the 
sake of our interests, territorial, commercial 
and strategic, in the canal and its neighborhood, 
the principal avenues of approach to Panama 
and to the Gulf of Mexico. This is a perfectly 
justifiable purpose, at which no fair minded 
individual or nation can cavil, and which, in- 
deed, we would be absurdly shortsighted to 



THE TWO AMERICAS 135 

neglect. The same motives lie behind our latest 
Caribbean venture, the purchase of the Danish 
Islands, of which St. Thomas and St. John, with 
the roadstead between them, constitute poten- 
tially what one expert has termed an "Amer- 
ican G ibraltar, ' ' the most formidable stronghold 
and naval base in the entire Caribbean. The 
eternal presence of the German cloven hoof 
appears in the facts that German influence de- 
feated our attempts to purchase these islands 
sixteen years ago, and that at the outbreak of 
the world war the Hamburg- American (Ger- 
man) steamship corporation had established at 
St. Thomas a system of docks, coal depots and 
other properties which quite exceeded the re- 
quirements of a mere commercial headquarters. 
Indeed, an explanation of our recent activ- 
ities in Haiti cannot neglect the circumstances 
that, when the war began, that republic was, to 
employ the phrase of an authority, "practically 
a German commercial sphere, ' ' and that German 
designs on Mole St. Nicholas, a position domi- 
nating the important Windward Passage and 
blanketing our naval station at Guantanamo, 
Cuba, were well understood. Nor, in our in- 
terest in Santo Domingo, could we have ignored 
the existence of Samana Bay, on its northeast 
coast, an inland sea twenty-five miles long and 
ten miles wide, flanked by high ridges, its mouth 
protected by a coral reef broken by channels 
from twelve to twenty fathoms deep leading to 
a great deep water roadstead twelve by eight 
miles in extent, capable of holding all the navies 



136 THE WORLD PERIL 

of the world with room to spare, flanking the 
Mona Passage, and second only to the Danish 
Islands in strategic importance. 

We cannot regard as least among the advan- 
tages which the great European war has brought 
to us our escape from the normal consequences 
of our improvidence and ineptitude in the past 
and our success, through taking advantage of 
Germany's distractions elsewhere, in breaking 
her tightening clutch upon the doorways of our 
trade and the natural defences of our coast. 
Never were the ministrations of that Providence 
which is said to protect babies and the United 
States more charitably in evidence; and, by its 
salutary interposition, backed by the sobering 
and impelling lessons of the war itself, we are 
in a fair way to repair our old fences, build new 
ones and secure the necessary preemptions to 
safeguard our national preserves against de- 
signing squatters from overseas, whose utter 
lack of scruples is offset by an abnormal pen- 
chant for acquisitiveness. 

Our belated awakening to the importance of 
Latin America to our national future appears 
not only in the spheres of politics and strategy, 
but in that of commerce as well. Since the war 
began we have devoted a really remarkable 
amount of energy and intelligence to the pro- 
motion of our business relations with her. For 
years her markets had been in bitter dispute 
principally between England and Germany, with 



THE TWO AMERICAS 137 

the United States a comparatively weak con- 
tender, except in the Caribbean region, where 
we have had distinct interests and advantages, 
and, to a less extent, in Brazil, the bulk of whose 
coffee crop has come to us. 

The "Open Sesame" for Europe's business 
with Latin America has been her heavy invest- 
ment in Latin American projects — in national 
securities to some extent, but particularly in 
public utilities and private construction works 
— railroads, lighting and power plants, irriga- 
tion and mining projects, and the like. England 
has long been the world's chief lender. When 
the war broke out, her interests in Latin Amer- 
ica were reckoned at $4,000,000,000, Germany 
and France following with about $1,000,000,000 
each, and the United States figuring insignifi- 
cantly. 

"Trade follows the loan" has become a com- 
mercial axiom. The pouring of immense quan- 
tities of England's surplus wealth into South 
America created huge credits in her favor, 
credits which South America, poorly supplied 
w T ith ready capital, discharged by shipping raw 
products to England — an arrangement which 
pleased and profited both parties. English 
money invested in construction projects went 
in on an understanding that the material used 
in the work should come from English factories, 
and so an ever increasing demand for English 
goods was created. Moreover, English subsi- 
dized utilities advanced civilization and pros- 



138 THE WOKLD PERIL 

perity, prosperity created additional wealth, 
and additional wealth meant more purchasing 
power for the absorption of English exports. 
The readiness of English capitalists to lend 
to South America established ties of mutual 
interest, confidence and good will, which some- 
one has called the "immovable foundation of 
a commercial edifice," and which have stood 
England in good stead on more than one occa- 
sion. It has been said that one of her strongest 
assets in maintaining herself so well against 
the fierce competition of Germany has been the 
feeling of regard and gratitude current among 
South Americans to the country whose sym- 
pathy and aid contributed most toward placing 
their feet upon the ladder of progress. 

The commercial nations of Europe, thor- 
oughly organized financially, with a surplus of 
money for investment (for which few attractive 
opportunities appeared in their own highly de- 
veloped countries), manufacturing in excess of 
their needs and requiring raw products for their 
factories and food for their people from foreign 
sources, were ideally prepared for exactly the 
opportunities offered by South America. In the 
United States, on the other hand, the demand 
for capital to develop our seemingly inexhaust- 
ible resources has been, until recently, far in 
excess of the supply available for use. Further- 
more, most of the products we have had for 
export, such as grains, meat and the like, have 
been exactly those which the South Americans 



THE TWO AMERICAS 139 

themselves produce; in a word, there has been 
no great natural incentive to exchange between 
nations both with a surplus of raw materials 
and both with a market for manufactured goods. 
And, in the years just before the war, when 
certain of our manufactures had reached a vol- 
ume that made exporting profitable and desir- 
able, we found the European exporters firmly 
established among peoples naturally conserva- 
tive in trade relations and inclined to continue 
the old, satisfactory business connections, and 
fortified by a financial organization so elaborate 
and formidable as to discourage attack. 

The most baffling element in the situation for 
the United States has been that even those South 
American commodities in demand in this coun- 
try (such as Brazil's coffee) have not paid for 
our goods consumed in South America, but, 
ironically enough, for the goods of our foreign 
rivals. In her financial relations with Europe, 
South America has regularly found herself on 
the debit side of the ledger, her obligations de- 
pending partly on imports of European goods, 
but considerably, also, on interest due on Eu- 
rope's immense investments in her securities. 
On the other hand, her trade balance with the 
United States has been as regularly favorable 
to her, with no counter claims to offset it. In 
other words, she has constantly owed money 
to England, for example, and has had money 
due her from the United States. Obviously, she 
has used her credits to pay her debts, and in- 
stead of spending the money we have owed her 



140 THE WORLD PERIL 

in this country for United States goods, she has 
handed it over to England in discharge of obli- 
gations to her. This triangle of trade, as one 
writer has called it, "operates effectively to 
siphon gold from this country, and by this 
method the more we buy the more we add to the 
selling power of our competitors. ' y 

The greatest asset which European exporters 
have had in their battle for America's trade has 
been their banking system, and its effectiveness 
appears the more by comparison with the primi- 
tive methods which have obtained until recently 
in this country. Of this system, the keystone 
is the bill of exchange on London. This bill, 
drawn, of course, in pounds sterling, has be- 
come the currency of the world. The ready de- 
mand for it everywhere, based on England's 
supremacy as the centre of the world's wealth 
and as the greatest buyer and seller, as well as 
the greatest lender of surplus capital, has made 
it the medium of international exchange, the 
cheapest and most marketable commercial paper 
in existence, "preferred to gold because trans- 
ferable with greater rapidity, less risk and 
loss." Thus a merchant in the United States, 
owing an Argentine exporting house for a ship- 
ment of goods, has liquidated his indebtedness 
by a bill on London and has been under the 
necessity of paying tribute to English banks in 
the form of commissions and exchange. "Mil- 
lions of bags of coffee imported into the United 
States annually pay a toll of five to six cents 
a bag in commissions on drafts." 



THE TWO AMERICAS 141 

A constant difficulty in selling to South Amer- 
ican merchants has been their demand for long 
term credits. They have an excellent reputa- 
tion for conscientiousness and reliability, but 
they do business under conditions which make 
it impossible for them to discharge their obliga- 
tions with the promptness to which merchants 
in the United States have been accustomed. 
Capital is not as plentiful in South as in North 
America. Many of the customers are poor na- 
tives whose purchasing power is slight and who 
depend on the merchants to carry accounts for 
them in anticipation of their crops, which must 
be harvested before they can pay. The high 
duties and freight charges on shipments to 
South America often compel importers to buy 
goods in larger quantities than they can dispose 
of promptly and to carry them for long periods, 
thus tying up their money in stock on hand. 

European business has met these conditions 
in two ways. In the first place, branches of the 
big British and German banks located in the 
principal South American cities, with the rev- 
enues of the parent banks behind them, have 
been able to grant the desired credits at lucra- 
tive rates of interest to local firms purchasing 
of British and German merchants, whose stand- 
ing they have investigated and found satisfac- 
tory. Until the passage of the Federal Reserve 
act in 1913, our banks were not permitted to 
establish foreign branches, and our exporters 
were compelled to take the entire burden of 
credit on their own shoulders. 



142 THE WOKLD PERIL 

Another handicap enjoyed by Europeans has 
been the use of acceptances. By this device, a 
British exporter who had sold goods in South 
America might draw upon his South American 
customer at any number of days sight, forward- 
ing his draft with the shipping documents (bill 
of lading, etc.) to a British branch bank in the 
consignee's locality. Upon acceptance (i.e., en- 
dorsement) of the draft by the latter, who thus 
bound himself to honor it at maturity, the bill 
of lading was delivered to him, enabling him 
to secure the goods. The draft was sold in the 
market and, when it matured, was paid by the 
consignee. Meanwhile, the exporter had re- 
ceived his money at once from the central bank, 
and everybody was happy. The enormous ad- 
vantage possessed by a manufacturer who could 
command such resources in dealing with coun- 
tries where credit is king measures the differ- 
ence between a British or German merchant and 
an American before the Federal Eeserve act 
legalized the discounting of acceptances by 
American banks. 

In fact, until the great war brought the na- 
tions of the world to our doors, gold bags in 
hand, competing with one another for the privi- 
lege of purchasing our wares at our own prices, 
it could hardly be said that we had more than 
a superficial acquaintance with the science of 
foreign trade. Let business be poor at home 
and our manufacturers unable to dispose of 
their products to our own citizens, and a tem- 
porary and somewhat bewildered plunge into 



THE TWO AMERICAS 143 

the foreign market might be made to tide over 
the situation, but, with the return of better 
times, the extended hand has usually been with- 
drawn, old connections resumed and the disap-r 
pointed new customer left to exercise his 
vocabulary at the expense of American busi- 
ness methods and to form emphatic resolutions 
for the future with " never again !" as their 
major theme. True, our shipments abroad have 
been far from contemptible, but hitherto a large 
proportion of them has consisted of natural 
products that practically sold themselves and 
of articles manufactured by great corporations 
having the resources to create new markets. 

While our money was finding profitable em- 
ployment at home, Europeans were building up 
gigantic, intricately organized agencies for buy- 
ing, selling and carrying the commodities in 
which they were dealing, calculated to discour- 
age the enterprising American entrepreneur, 
not only by preoccupation of the territory and 
by their very vastness, but also because, under 
their laws, they were able to combine with one 
another for increased efficiency and power and 
to rely upon the active support of great systems 
of banks equipped with foreign branches and 
of their governments as well to provide them 
with every possible resource in the struggle for 
trade supremacy. 

England, perennial reservoir of surplus cap- 
ital and pioneer among manufacturing nations, 
has long been the giant in the foreign field, but, 
in the years preceding the war, it was the phe- 



144 THE WORLD PERIL 

nomenal rise of Germany that astonished the 
world. Everybody knows the story of the car- 
tels, those vast unions of manufacturing inter- 
ests which have determined the character of 
German industrial life, forcing down the prices 
of raw products which they require by playing 
off rival producers against each other, raising 
the cost of their goods at home at their own 
sweet will, and crushing competition abroad by 
selling at a lower price in Buenos Aires or Rio 
de Janeiro than the buyer in Berlin pays for 
the same article, protected from assault from 
without by high tariff walls and preferential 
rates on railroads, and rendering emulation 
more hopeless by agreements with steamship 
lines regarding freight rates, routes and space 
for cargoes. 

It is not only that these monsters of coordi- 
nated efficiency have squatted defiantly before 
the golden fleece of American commerce, but 
Jason, in the person of the ambitious competitor 
from the United States, has had no suitable 
weapon with which to dislodge them. It was 
torn from his hand before he had sought to use 
it when, in 1890, our Congress, responding to 
the public hostility to the great trusts — similar 
monsters native to our own soil, which were be- 
lieved to be crushing freedom of competition in 
American business — forbade, by the Sherman 
act, combinations in restraint of trade not only 
among the several States but with foreign na- 
tions as well. Perhaps, as has been sometimes 
asserted, the legislators who framed this im- 



THE TWO AMERICAS 145 

portant measure did not intend it to operate to 
render American exporters, who refrained from 
illegal combinations at home, powerless to meet 
their foreign rivals abroad with their own 
weapons; but probable intent is hardly a de- 
pendable argument before a court of law, the 
plain wording of the act has remained to stare 
our exporters in the face and the potentialities 
of the cartels have gone far toward reducing 
them to a philosophical resignation. 

An American business man, experienced in 
the foreign field, has given convincing testimony 
to the cartels' efficiency. There are in Ger- 
many, he estimates, thirty thousand associations 
of one sort or another, dealing with foreign 
trade alone. These are frequently "subsidiary 
creations of great financial institutions which 
dictate their general policies and cause them 
closely to conform to those of the Government. 
In turn the community of interest of these in- 
stitutions greatly strengthens the position of 
the industrial system of the German Empire 
and makes their constituent members most ef- 
fective factors in securing business abroad. 
Two powerful banking groups dominate and 
direct the operations of practically all large 
corporations, such as steamship lines, shipbuild- 
ing plants, mines and steel works, arms and 
ammunition works, electrical manufactories, 
electro-chemical establishments, etc. This net- 
work of connections between German financial 
interests and German industries has ramifica- 
tions which extend throughout the world. So, 



146 THE WOELD PERIL 

for example, we find in the chief cities of the 
Argentine and Chile railway, lighting and power 
enterprises, financed by German banks, large 
shareholders in the corporations which have 
supplied all the materials of construction. ' ' 

Not only have we lacked the banking facilities 
and cooperative organization on which our 
rivals in trade have relied; we have lacked also 
American bottoms in which to transport our 
goods. Our merchant marine was, from various 
economic reasons, practically driven from the 
seas in the 1850s. Since then our supply of ship- 
ping for foreign trade has been relatively nil and 
we have been compelled to rely largely on the 
service that European carriers have been willing 
to allow us for our Latin American trade. While 
it appears that this service has been, on the 
whole, adequate to the trade, and that American 
shippers have not been systematically mulcted 
in freight rates, as has sometimes been alleged, 
the explanation may lie in the fact that, until 
recently, American competition has been too in- 
significant to disturb European serenity. Now 
that it has become a potent factor in the field, 
it is a bit disquieting to reflect that, when peace 
is concluded, it may be at the mercy of the great 
government subsidized European lines which 
in the past have controlled the foreign carrying 
business by means of categorical agreements 
known as "conferences" in which English, Ger- 
man and other companies have joined, dividing 
the territory among themselves, fixing rates of 
transportation, pooling their earnings and ad- 



THE TWO AMERICAS 147 

ministering a system of rebates to crush inter- 
lopers. Under the rebate arrangement, a South 
American exporter who signs and observes an 
annual contract to send all his goods by the 
conference line is entitled, at the end of the 
year, to a rebate of ten per cent, on his ship- 
ments. What makes the conference most for- 
midable to American competition is the fact that 
the South American shipper must depend upon 
it for his shipments to Europe as well as to the 
United States and realizes that a single cargo 
forwarded to New York in an American 
freighter will deprive him of both his European 
and American rebates for the year and may 
permanently lose him the use of conference bot- 
toms. Consequently, to have any chance of suc- 
cess in a battle with the conference for the South 
American carrying trade, projected American 
lines would be under the necessity of maintain- 
ing European as well as American connections 
and routes, in the face of rivals already firmly 
established, assured of the support of their 
governments in the form of subsidies and other 
perquisites, and of carrying into the contest im- 
pedimenta in the form of higher cost of ships 
built in this country, unintelligent restrictions 
placed on shipping by Congress and an attitude 
toward our merchant marine on the part of the 
American people which, for charity's sake, may 
be described as indifference. 

One could go on indefinitely multiplying more 
or less familiar explanations of our failure in 
the contest for the South American field: lack 



148 THE WORLD PERIL 

of cooperation between the Government and 
business; the disinclination of onr merchants, 
whose experience and success have been gained 
at home, to take the trouble to understand and 
adapt themselves to the business methods, needs 
and etiquette of a people whose conditions of 
life and point of view differ markedly from their 
own ; American ignorance of the geography, his- 
tory and institutions of the southern continent ; 
a fatal disposition to patronize and urge rather 
than to fraternize and persuade; a dearth of 
high grade salesmen possessing the social adapt- 
ability, culture and savoir faire so important to 
the Latin, and conversant with the languages 
of the countries to which they are sent; and, 
finally, the absence of any considerable number 
of immigrants from the United States to create 
a demand for our goods. It will, however, be 
more profitable and stimulating to inquire what 
Uncle Sam has done to atone for his past sins 
of omission and to measure up to the superb 
opportunities for new friendships, new markets, 
increased helpfulness and enhanced profits 
which the great war has created for him. 

On the whole, the record is one to make us 
proud of the breadth of view, efficiency and 
adaptability of our people. In estimating it, we 
must remember that economically the war has 
been the greatest disturbance in history and 
that, excepting the belligerents who have been 
actually overwhelmed by the military forces of 
their enemies, no nations were more immedi- 
ately hurt by it than those of South America. 



THE TWO AMERICAS 149 

Here were partially developed and dependent 
countries suddenly deprived not only of a large 
part of the manufactured commodities, neces- 
saries as well as luxuries, on which they had 
been accustomed to rely (Germany alone had 
furnished them with about twenty per cent, of 
their imports, and figures do not begin to tell 
the whole story, because in many cheap and im- 
portant articles of daily use, especially by the 
poorer classes, German goods commanded prac- 
tically the entire market), while at the same 
time the European demand for their natural 
products decreased so greatly as to diminish 
their purchasing power to the point where 
fundamental readjustments in habits of life 
were demanded; the ships on which they had 
depended for carrying their exports and im- 
ports ceased to visit their harbors; the vast 
sums which had come almost unsought from 
Europe for investment in their public and pri- 
vate enterprises were now absorbed at home, 
necessitating the suspension or abandonment 
of wealth producing development projects ; and 
the resources of credit which had been an un- 
failing antidote for their lack of capital were 
cut off almost without warning. The whole con- 
tinent passed through a crisis which varied in 
intensity in the several countries in accordance 
with the closeness of their reliance on Europe 
and with the soundness of their financial insti- 
tutions; and while the allied nations, notably 
England, showed an admirable fidelity to their 
South American connections and an extraordi- 



150 THE WOKLD PERIL 

nary ability, under the circumstances, to con- 
tinue their trade relations at something like 
their normal level, it was the United States that 
saved the situation. 

The record appears in a nutshell in the ac- 
companying table, the export figures affording 
striking evidence of South America's slump in 
purchasing capacity in the early period of the 
war and her subsequent recovery as she ad- 
justed herself to the new conditions. 

Trade of the United States. 
Imports. 
Country 1913 1914 1915 1916 

Argentina. $ 25,576,000 $ 56,274,000 $ 94,678,000 $116,293,000 



Bolivia. . . 


398 


172 


33,000 


209,000 


Brazil .... 


100,948,000 


95,001,000 


120,099,000 


132,067,000 


Chile 


29,554,000 


24,239,000 


37,284,000 


82,124,000 


Colombia. . 


15,714,000 


17,548,000 


19,820,000 


25,645,000 


Ecuador . . 


3,453,000 


3,356,000 


5,417,000 


7,976,000 


Guiana, B. 


98,000 


223,000 


266,000 


1,065,000 


Guiana, D. 


813,000 


1,035,000 


624,000 


1,075,000 


Guiana, F. 


32,000 




47,000 


34,000 


Paraguay . 


67,000 


' 61,000 


29,000 


51,000 


Peru 


10,825,000 


11,270,000 


15,804,000 


31,083,000 


Uruguay. . 


1,861,000 


9,597,000 


13,889,000 


16,277,000 


Venezuela. 


9,309,000 


10,917,000 


14,292,000 
£322,282,000 i 


13,711,000 


Total. . . 


$198,259,000 $229,520,000 ! 


£427,610,000 






Exports. 








1913 


1914 


1915 


1916 


Argentina. $ 54,980, 


$27,128,000 $ 52,841,000 $ 76,874,000 


Bolivia. . . 


960,000 


806,000 


964,000 


1,888,000 


Brazil. . . . 


39,901,000 


23,276,000 


33,953,000 


47,679,000 


Chile 


16,617,000 


13,628,000 


17,816,000 


33,383,000 


Colombia. . 


7,647,000 


5,784,000 


9,004,000 


14,287,000 


Ecuador. . 


2,882,000 


2,504,000 


3,368,000 


5,005,000 


Guiana, B. 


1,630,000 


1,813,000 


1,908,000 


2,544,000 


Guiana, D. 


732,000 


655,000 


587,000 


861,000 


Guiana, F. 


319,000 


282,000 


535,000 


493,000 


Paraguay . 


215,000 


83,000 


53,000 


86,000 


Peru 


7,609,000 


5,876,000 


7,917,000 


13,986,000 


Uruguay. . 


7,617,000 


4,153,000 


7,889,000 


11,851,000 


Venezuela. 


5,462,000 


5,024,000 


7,295,000 


11,337,000 



Total... $146,515,000 $91,013,000 $144,129,000 $220,288,000 



THE TWO AMERICAS 151 

Figures are usually dry reading, but these are 
not without romance, and when one considers 
the chaos produced in South America by the 
war, they take on an added glamor. Complete 
statistics for the fiscal year ending June 30, 
1917, are not yet available, but those for the first 
nine months are inspiring testimony that our 
campaign gains in momentum as Latin America 
recovers her equilibrium. Between July 1, 
1916, and March 31, 1917, we exchanged with 
her $1,070,000,000 in commodities (U. S. exports, 
$420,000,000; imports, $650,000,000), as com- 
pared with $798,000,000 (exports, $294,000,000; 
imports, $504,000,000) for the same period in 
1916 and $554,000,000 in 1914, the last year of 
peace. An expert estimates that, if the last 
three months of the recent fiscal year hold their 
normal relation to the others, our Latin Amer- 
ican trade will aggregate $1,500,000,000, or 
nearly three times what it was in the year be- 
fore the war. Most of this increase means new 
business with South America, to which we sup- 
plied thirty-three per cent, of her imports in 
1916 as compared with fifteen per cent, before 
the war. Percentages are far more significant 
than aggregates in dollars, for, of course, soar- 
ing war prices account for a good part of the 
increase in the latter. 

What, now, of the time when the war shall 
be over ? Shall we be able to retain the enviable 
position into which the embarrassments of 
Europe have thrust us, shall we hold and im- 
prove our advantages as growing Latin Amer- 



152 THE WOBLD PERIL 

ica's business associate, customer and backer 
and establish permanently the foundations of 
Pan-American economic solidarity and self-suf- 
ficiency, or will our rivals, entering the field of 
their former victories with greater determina- 
tion than ever, succeed in ignominiously expel- 
ling us t 

Certainly there is no lack of indications that 
we are not to maintain our ground without a 
struggle. Experts have pointed out that, since 
the war began, England has made greater 
strides in industrial efficiency than in fifteen or 
twenty-five years previously; that, as regards 
her South American trade, despite the tremen- 
dous demands on her wealth and her productive 
agencies, the diversion of her ships from their 
accustomed uses and the menace of the sub- 
marines, she has now been able to bring her 
exports close to ante-bellum figures; and that, 
when peace is declared, far from abdicating her 
sovereignty over the world's trade, she will ap- 
pear in the lists rearmed, rejuvenated and more 
formidable than ever. 

Germany's attitude finds characteristic ex- 
pression in a recent pamphlet by Dr. Paul Gast 
of Aix-la-Chapelle, which is of peculiar interest 
as indicating how slowly Teutonic obsessions 
yield to the logic of events: 

"It is in our interest to further this anti- 
Yankee spirit [in South America], for under 
no circumstances can we tolerate a political pre- 
dominance of the United States in this virgin 
economic soil. . . . Even this war, and our justi- 



THE TWO AMERICAS 153 

lied hatred of the Entente Powers, must not 
blind us to the fact that Germany's greatest 
danger in South America, so indispensable for 
our economic future, is not symbolized by the 
Union Jack, but by the Stars and Stripes. . . . 
Happily, the commercial beverage offered to the 
South Americans by the Yankee does not agree 
with their stomachs. It is not only the bitter 
Panama and Mexico after-taste which spoiled 
the digestion. The Yankee's prices are high, 
he insists on cash on delivery, and, what is of 
still more importance, he cannot adapt himself, 
as we Germans do, to the idiosyncrasies of the 
foreign customer. If Uncle Sam really wants 
to dislodge us from our solid positions there, he 
will have to use persistent trench warfare in- 
stead of old time cavalry attacks; not weeks 
and months, but decades are necessary to smash 
to pieces our cemented industrial dugouts. . . . 
We wish to impress upon the world at large, 
and the United States in particular, that Ger- 
many, this world Power, with its dense popula- 
tion, its eagerness for work, its financial 
strength, carries on this bloody war unflinch- 
ingly, because it is borne on by the inspiring 
knowledge that it is its duty to create for its 
future generations a free field for a world em- 
bracing activity, and that, consequently, it can- 
not suffer it that the countries of Latin America, 
one-seventh of the earth's surface, with their 
natural treasures and progressive population, 
be closed to the influence of the German spirit, 
of German labor. We insist upon fair play in 



154 THE WOBLD PERIL 

the South American field, not for nebulous pur- 
poses, but for the sake of our own well under- 
stood future." 

A French writer tells of such recent develop- 
ments as the formation of a ' ' Hispano-Germanic 
Society" to facilitate relations between German 
and Spanish speaking peoples, of an " Economic 
Committee" and of various other societies to 
resume and develop German-American social 
and business connections, and the energetic use 
of the press in German interests. Moreover, 
the disconcerting activity of Japan in develop- 
ing new ship lines and in greatly increasing her 
emigration to South America introduces an 
added complication into an already perplexing 
problem. 

But, whatever the final outcome, it is safe to 
predict that the United States will never again 
be relegated to the position in South American 
trade which she occupied three years ago, for 
the simple reason that our business men and 
our Government have not been content merely 
to picnic upon the new ground, but have pro- 
ceeded to fortify themselves so effectively that 
much of it, at least, is bound to remain perma- 
nently in their possession. In fact, it is not fair 
to them to intimate that they waited until the 
upheaval in Europe did their foundation work 
for them, for, before that event, an intelligent 
beginning had been made. Still, one needs only 
mention that the American Manufacturers' 
Export Association and the Chamber of Com- 
merce of the United States, our nationwide 



THE TWO AMERICAS 155 

conferences of business interests, devoted to 
the study of problems of trade and the educa- 
tion of Congress and the country to its needs, 
are but some six years old ; that the Department 
of Commerce at Washington, our governmental 
auxiliary to private enterprise, first appeared 
as a separate executive bureau in 1913 ; and that 
the National Foreign Trade Council, a com- 
mittee of our ablest business men pledged to 
the promotion of "greater national prosperity 
through greater foreign trade,' ' and particu- 
larly of the welfare of the small manufacturer, 
antedates the war by only three months, to sug- 
gest how lately American business has suffi- 
ciently appreciated the importance of coopera- 
tive effort to take the trouble to practice it. 
Local enterprise has gone hand in hand with 
the larger organizations, and the early months 
of the war were characterized by the formation 
or rejuvenation of merchants ' and manufactur- 
ers ' organizations and of "get together" meas- 
ures of every description, with Latin America 
for their field of operation. One of our big 
express companies, sending representatives to 
South America to study opportunities for its 
own business, offered the services of these ex- 
perts to investigate openings for its patrons, 
and promptly received seven hundred letters 
bespeaking the proffered aid. 

Of all the harbingers of happier days for 
inter-American trade, none has brought more 
satisfaction to our exporters than two sections 
in the Federal Reserve act, the first authorizing 



156 THE WOELD PERIL 

national banking institutions with a capital of 
$1,000,000 or more to establish branch banks 
abroad, the other permitting branch banks, 
under certain restrictions, to discount accept- 
ances based on the importation or exportation 
of goods. In signing this bill, the President 
swept away with a stroke of his pen some of 
the most formidable obstructions that have 
seemed completely to block the path of our com- 
merce. It is enough to distinguish the act that 
it destroys, once for all, the absolute sway in 
international trade of the bill on London, and 
with it the tribute exacted from us by English 
financiers. Henceforth, branches of powerful 
United States banks located in Latin America 
can sell drafts on their head institutions in dol- 
lars instead of in pounds sterling, and since 
these will save the extra interest and commis- 
sions charged on foreign bills, they will be 
cheapest for American business. The bill on 
London is firmly intrenched in the world's mar- 
kets and there is no expectation of ousting it, 
but there is every indication that, with the ap- 
pearance of our banks in foreign fields and the 
expansion of our trading relations, dollar ex- 
change will supplant sterling exchange in inter- 
American transactions. Moreover, in times of 
stress like the present, when sterling exchange 
is disorganized, the dollar may well provide the 
ballast to keep the ship of world finance on an 
even keel. 

That the promotion of dollar exchange will 
be but one of the many advantages we may ex- 



THE TWO AMERICAS 157 

pect from our branch banks in Latin America 
is manifest from an interesting statement by- 
Mr. James H. Perkins, Vice-President of the 
National City Bank of New York (the first 
American bank to take advantage of the new 
opportunities for profit and patriotic service 
created by the Federal Reserve act, and now 
maintaining branches in Buenos Aires, Monte- 
video, Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, Santos, Sao Paulo, 
Valparaiso and Havana), in an article in the 
World's Work. He speaks thus of the activ- 
ities of his institution: 

"The bank will furnish the facilities which 
are generally supplied by branch banks every- 
where; that is, they will accept deposits, issue 
letters of credit, handle collections and deal in 
exchange. The operations of the branches will 
create a market for the American dollar with 
the result that gradually direct exchange will 
become a fact between South America and the 
United States. Under the Federal Reserve Act, 
national banks may make acceptance of long 
time bills growing out of foreign commercial 
transactions. This provision creates an oppor- 
tunity for an American bill to be developed 
similar to the best known financial instrument, 
the London bill, which is now the chief medium 
in the world's commerce. The 'bill' is now a 
1 sterling' instrument. It will be possible under 
the new order to draw an increasing number of 
such bills in dollars instead of pounds, and the 
world market for the dollar should be enlarged 
to a point where it will take a prominent place 



158 THE WORLD PERIL 

in international exchange. Direct transfers by 
cable of funds from the branch to the parent 
bank, or from the parent bank to any bank in 
the United States and vice versa, will become 
possible with the minimum of expense. Grad- 
ually a broad discount market for American 
bills will be developed and will undoubtedly go 
a long way toward encouraging the use of the 
draft on New York instead of on London in 
settlement of international transactions. 

' ' The gathering of credit information will be 
one of the most important functions of the bank. 
As rapidly as possible the branches will collect 
reliable credit information concerning South 
American business and will at the same time 
be in a position to give the South American busi- 
ness people correct credit information about the 
people with whom they have transactions in the 
United States. . . . 

* ' There will be attached to each branch one or 
more commercial representatives, who in a 
broad sense may be said to be the personal rep- 
resentatives of American business interests. 
These men will study trade conditions in the 
country to which they are assigned and will 
form cooperative relations with the foreign 
business men who are interested in the com- 
merce of this country. They will thus be in a 
position to act as intermediaries and will be 
able to assist the representatives of American 
business interests who visit South America. 
They will look for trade opportunities and when 
such opportunities arise will communicate with 



THE TWO AMERICAS 159 

the foreign trade department of the bank, which 
will be in a position to indicate these oppor- 
tunities to the interested business organizations 
here. They will, furthermore, be in a position 
to make investigation of the possibilities for 
particular articles in the market, and, when an 
exhaustive investigation along some technical 
line is required, to employ a technical repre- 
sentative who will be competent and reliable. 
Many firms have already asked that preliminary 
investigations of this kind be made, and in nu- 
merous instances requests have been made that 
the representatives purchase various articles in 
the original package to be sent to the American 
manufacturer so that he may not only ascertain 
the character and quality of the article but the 
way the article is prepared for market, packed, 
labelled, etc. The commercial representative 
will also be able to give information regarding 
refused shipments, custom house delays, etc., 
and in other ways will be of assistance in 
smoothing out difficulties that are encountered 
by the exporter. ' ' 

The National City Bank also maintains a val- 
uable library of trade statistics, government re- 
ports and general literature useful to exporters, 
issues frequent summaries of the latest news 
from the South American field, publishes and 
distributes gratis an excellent monthly maga- 
zine, The Americas, and, in cooperation with 
leading educational institutions, is preparing 
selected young men by a thorough and sys- 
tematic business education for positions in its 
foreign departments. 



160 THE WORLD PERIL 

Entirely aside from mere considerations of 
dollars and cents, one would search far to find 
a business organization administered with loftier 
imagination, greater constructive ability and a 
more profound conception of public service than 
this. Other American banking and mercantile 
houses have followed the shining example, and 
with encouraging success, although it was well 
understood at the start that big returns from 
South America could not be expected immedi- 
ately and that establishments there were in the 
nature of bread cast upon the waters. They are 
a new generation of American pioneers, opening 
new regions for fresh achievements of Amer- 
ican genius. Business follows them into the 
channels they have explored, and its triumphs 
will constitute their reward and their monu- 
ment. 

Among the most important services to be ren- 
dered by our banks and business establishments 
in South America will be that of opening the 
door for the investment of our capital in those 
countries. Here, again, the war has provided 
the stimulus. Not only has the usual supply of 
European money been cut off from them, not 
only have the governmental and private projects 
necessary to their progress been brought to a 
halt, not only have they turned to us for help 
in their distress, but the warring nations them- 
selves, straining their resources to finance their 
monster war establishments and to discharge 
the heavy trade balance constantly mounting up 
against them through their purchases of our 



THE TWO AMERICAS 161 

manufactures and foodstuffs, first dumped their 
holdings of our own stock and bonds back upon 
us and, after we absorbed these, have followed 
them with South American securities. Thus 
Europe herself is thrusting us into her place as 
guarantor of South America's prosperity, and 
it has only remained for us to adapt ourselves 
to our new role. 

That we have not been entirely averse to doing 
so is suggested by a recent estimate that, by 
the end of July, 1916, our investments in South 
America alone had risen from the very few 
millions ventured before the war to between 
$750,000,000 and $1,000,000,000, compared with 
British interests totalling something less than 
$4,000,000,000. This sum, a surprising showing 
for a newcomer in the field, is made up partly 
of stocks and bonds turned over to us by Europe, 
partly of our own direct loans to governments 
and new purchases of securities and partly of 
actual property holdings by American interests, 
many of them acquired since the beginning of 
the war, such, for example, as the $3,500,000 
packing plant opened by Armour and Company 
at La Plata, Argentina, in 1915. 

An outstanding milestone of progress is the 
American International Corporation of New 
York, a 1915 creation, capitalized at $50,000,000, 
numbering among its stockholders many of our 
foremost manufacturers and dedicated to the 
promotion of our Latin American commercial 
relations. This remarkable organization not 
only labors for the development of inter- Amer- 



162 THE WORLD PERIL 

ican trade, but locates and investigates oppor- 
tunities for new investments and new business 
and construction enterprises in the southern 
countries. In connection with this latter phase 
of its activity, it maintains an expert engineer- 
ing department to look into promising building 
and development projects and to advise inter- 
ested American companies regarding them. 
While its primary object is to assist American 
business in Latin America rather than to seek 
advantages for itself, it is prepared, on occa- 
sion, to act directly and to seize opportunities 
that might otherwise redound to the advantage 
of our rivals. For example, it purchased the 
fleet of the Pacific Mail Company to save our 
west coat carrying trade from complete absorp- 
tion by Japan. Recently it was reported to have 
taken the important contract for the extension 
of the port of Buenos Aires. 

Our Government, responding, doubtless, to the 
inspiriting activity of private enterprises, has 
ranged itself by their side in the battle. With- 
out attempting to detail the official agencies now 
at the disposal of American business, one may 
mention the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic 
Commerce of the Department of Commerce, with 
its special Latin American division; the Daily 
Consular and Trade Reports, providing ex- 
porters with the latest intelligences from abroad ; 
and an efficient system, developed by Secretary 
Redfield, of regular commercial attaches to col- 
lect data and furnish advice, special agents to 
travel wherever needed to study local condi- 



THE TWO AMERICAS 163 

tions, and offices in our principal cities, manned 
by trained experts, to disseminate information 
to interested parties — all this in addition to our 
increasingly capable consular service. Indeed, 
it may be said that the executive branch of our 
Government is employing every means in its 
power, under our present laws, to give Amer- 
ican business the sort of support which it has 
always had to do without and which its Euro- 
pean competitors have counted on as a matter 
of course. 

The men who have shown themselves so apt 
to seize the chances which the great war af- 
forded our country have been no less fertile in 
constructive suggestions for meeting the assault 
upon our newly established positions which 
Europe is sure to make when she is again free 
to do so. If, for example, our commercial re- 
sources are not coordinated to match the col- 
lective efficiency of the great European business 
combinations such as the German cartels, the 
fault is not with them, for the Webb bill, de- 
signed to facilitate that very result by legalizing 
associations "entered into for the sole purpose 
of engaging in export trade and actually en- 
gaged solely in such export trade" and agree- 
ments made by them, provided neither the 
association nor the agreement operates "in re- 
straint of trade within the United States" or 
"in restraint of the export trade of any domes- 
tic competitor," is before Congress, projected 
and indorsed by commercial conventions and 
organizations throughout the country. Some 



164 THE WOELD PERIL 

opposition to it has developed, principally from 
the fear that powerful cooperative instrumen- 
talities, fostered under its cloak, will find a way 
to attack and stifle competitors at home and 
bring back, in a new guise, all the old evils of 
the trusts from which the Sherman act was de- 
signed to emancipate us ; but its sponsors point 
to the powers of our. Federal Trade Commission 
as entirely adequate to detect such tendencies 
and invoke the law against them. 

The Webb bill does not, of course, invest our 
trade with the whole arsenal of weapons pos- 
sessed by the cartels, but it does at least go as 
far toward giving American enterprise a fight- 
ing chance as our democratic instincts will tol- 
erate, while at the same time safeguarding the 
welfare of the home consumer, which the Ger- 
man system has conspicuously failed to do. 

For an American merchant marine, also, much 
has been done. The enforced withdrawal of 
European bottoms from the world's trade 
turned our shipyards into hives of industry. 
The menace of Germany's submarine campaign 
to our own security and the future of democracy 
brought us into the war and focussed our ener- 
gies, governmental and private, upon the build- 
ing of ships. Congress passed laws removing 
some of the most obvious impediments to the 
registry of ships under our flag and created our 
already rather painfully notorious Shipping 
Board, which, now that it has been pared and 
patted into harmony, may be expected to give us 
a great fleet of steel or wooden vessels or both, 



THE TWO AMERICAS 165 

which will be available, so far as they survive 
the war, to support our prestige on the seas. 
By an ironical perversion of German dreams, 
her vast overseas commerce has ceased to be 
and many of her mightiest "sea leviathans" 
have gone to swell the resources of her enemies. 
Sic transit gloria maris. 

Experts say that the time honored belief that 
American ships cannot be built to compete with 
Europe on account of the excessive cost of con- 
struction in this country has become a mere 
bugaboo. Already we are able to produce the 
necessary materials, such as ship plates and 
shapes, more cheaply than Europe, and the high 
wages paid to American labor, though a severe 
handicap, may be offset, it is contended, by the 
same system of standardization (i.e., specializa- 
tion by each shipyard in particular sizes and 
types of ships) which our manufacturers have 
applied with such success to making automo- 
biles. A more serious problem is the cost of 
operation, embarrassed as it is by existing laws, 
notably those secured by "friends of labor" 
which prevent the employment of cheap alien 
seamen on our ships. If Congress and — what 
is more important — the people can be induced 
to turn their attention to a thorough study of 
the value and needs of our merchant marine, 
there is hope for the future. 

With such encouragements may we not be- 
lieve that our commerce with Latin America, 
despite the competition of Europe, will not suf- 
fer too severely from the coming of peace? 



166 THE WORLD PERIL 

What economic conditions will then appertain 
it is impossible to predict with certainty. En- 
rope's immediate demands for our help in her 
upbuilding will, of course, prove! irresistibly- 
tempting to our capital. But the war has al- 
ready accustomed us to enormous extension of 
credits and enormous production, and we should 
now be in a position to satisfy Europe's re- 
quirements without sacrificing our promising 
relations with our new business friends to the 
southward. True, our transactions with them 
now appear insignificant by comparison with 
our sales and loans to the warring nations, but, 
in normal times, Europe will not need our manu- 
factured goods or our money, while Latin Amer- 
ica will continue increasingly to demand both. 
Europe is destined to be our rival economically, 
Latin America our auxiliary. Our great sur- 
plus of natural products, which has constituted 
the bulk of our exports, will constantly diminish 
as our population increases, until our multiply- 
ing factories will take up our supply of raw 
materials and our workers will consume our 
foods ; while South America, unsuited, generally 
speaking, to the development of manufactures, 
is the world's unexploited treasure trove of 
natural resources. Both as sellers of finished 
commodities and as buyers of raw products, 
Europe and the United States will be competi- 
tors and Latin America will be a principal 
battlefield. Is it rash to postulate that, in lay- 
ing now the foundations of American economic 
interdependence, the United States is creating 
the surest guarantees for her future? 



THE TWO AMERICAS 167 

It is not, however, to mere considerations of 
politics and trade that we must look for light 
upon the future of inter-American relations. 
However strained and artificial may have been 
the motives that have determined the alliances 
of monarchs in the past, nations in the new 
world movement of democracy will come more 
and more to base their friendships upon com- 
mon impulses, common sympathies, common be- 
liefs and common ideals, upon mutual trust and 
confidence and esteem. Whether or not we move 
toward "that far off, divine event," "the Par- 
liament of man, the Federation of the world," 
no student of the progress of humanity can 
escape the conclusion that it is to the peoples 
that the coming ages are to belong. It is upon 
what the peoples of the two Americas think of 
each other, not upon doctrines and made to order 
projects of amity, that their history will depend. 

That the sentiments of the people of the 
United States toward our southern neighbors 
are those of hearty good will admits of no argu- 
ment. If when in the early years of their in- 
dependence they turned to us with naive en- 
thusiasm as their guide and mentor we lost our 
unique opportunity to win permanently their 
confidence and affection, our failure was due 
rather to faulty understanding than to defects 
of the heart. Failing to comprehend how dan- 
gerous to them was the compliment they had 
paid us in copying our intricate system of gov- 
ernment, which nothing in their previous experi- 
ence qualified them to administer, and ignorant, 



168 THE WOELD PEEIL 

or at least unappreciative, of the geographical, 
racial, social and economic obstacles which hin- 
dered their progress, our highly developed 
Anglo-Saxon sense of order and efficiency was 
outraged from the beginning by their apparent 
instability and hopeless futility in their political 
life; and, our own domestic problems claiming 
our whole attention, we turned from them with 
a pitying and helpless shake of our heads and, 
for some generations, seemed willing to return 
to them only when our selfish interests impelled 
us and, while continuing to wish them well and 
to pray for their salvation, were far too dis- 
posed to assume a rasping superiority that in- 
terpreted their interests in the light of our own. 
Our Monroe Doctrine, while in practice it 
proved to be a protection to the weak Latin 
republics, was enunciated principally in our own 
selfish interest, its capricious application has 
been sufficient evidence that it has continued 
to be so interpreted, and its intangibility and 
elastic adaptability to every exigency has earned 
it the suspicion which must naturally attach to 
any force at once so great and so mysterious. 
Devoting our energies and our wealth to our 
own advancement, withholding from the Latin 
Americans the sympathy and encouragement, 
moral and material, which as sister democ- 
racies they felt they had some reason to expect, 
we occasionally showed our consciousness of 
their existence by growling over them when 
Europe seemed to cast an envious eye in their 
direction, or by administering a correcting slap 



THE TWO AMERICAS 169 

or a sharp word when they trod ever so lightly 
upon our toes. Worst of all, when many of them 
had successfully emerged from their period of 
trial, had set their feet on the road to national 
stability and had developed a just pride in their 
achievements and prospects, we persisted pro- 
vincially in lumping them all together in our 
thought as a sort of simmering stew inseparably 
compounded of brawls and bankruptcy. Bead- 
ing the absurd and amazing references to them 
in the public prints and in the debates in Con- 
gress, one wonders whether there may not have 
been some worthy citizens to whose mind they 
belonged in the category to which Justice Taney 
relegated Dred Scott, possessed of "no rights 
which a white man is bound to respect.' ' 

The last twenty years — called with some out- 
ward show of reason, but with little real appre- 
ciation of their spirit, the imperialistic era of 
the United States — have been remarkable for 
the change they have wrought in our knowledge 
of and interest in world affairs. With this new 
knowledge and interest has come understanding 
of Latin America, her spirit and aspirations, 
and a conception of Pan-American sympathy 
and service. 

Unfortunately for us, our past sins of com- 
mission and omission now arise to plague us. 
We find too often that Latin Americans neither 
like nor trust us, and that we are under the 
painful necessity of proving to their satisfaction 
that our innocent appearing exterior is not a 
false covering hiding the wolf beneath. ' ' Span- 



170 THE WORLD PERIL 

ish America shows neither a surpassing inclina- 
tion of friendship, nor an unlimited confidence ' ' 
in the United States, says Professor Oliveira 
Lima of Brazil. "The Cuban war was started 
with an injustice to Spain ; it led to the annexa- 
tion of Porto Rico. The negotiations with Pan- 
ama, which Senhor Roosevelt can explain much 
better than I, have only served to increase our 
apprehensions, which are that the results of 
American imperialism may be just as impar- 
tially destructive as those of European im- 
perialism. . . . Pan-Americanism to us seems 
a mockery and impossible of realization. There 
is no racial, linguistic, traditional or religious 
community between ' Anglo-Saxon America ' (or 
shall we say, with Bryce, ' Teutonic America' ?) 
and Latin America. . . . True, we have some- 
times interests and sentiments in common, 
which, properly agitated and played upon, may 
bring excellent results. i Pan- Americanism ' 
continues to represent the ideal of a single 
union, and as most of the various ' isms' is con- 
tinually exhibited for the * grand effect' on the 
people — its actual influence being somewhat less 
than that of a substantial, solid, silver dollar." 
Even more outspoken is Senor F. Garcia-Cal- 
deron of Peru. "To save themselves from 
Yankee imperialism, ' ' he declares, "the Amer- 
ican democracies would almost accept a German 
alliance, or the aid of Japanese arms; every- 
where the Americans of the North are feared. 
In the Antilles and in Central America hostility 
against the Anglo-Saxon invaders assumes the 



THE TWO AMERICAS 171 

character of a Latin crusade." "The opening 
of the Panama Canal,' ' remarks a Colombian 
journalist, "will mark the date which our grand- 
children will remember — perhaps with sorrow — 
when they shall see each of the states of Latin 
America represented by a little twinkle on the 
Stars and Stripes.' ' A Mexican sociologist 
suggests that a conquest of the American tropics 
by the United States would supply her with the 
cereals which she needs in increasing quantities. 

"Anti-Yanqui" clubs abound in Latin Amer- 
ica. The press pays reiterated homage to North 
American "pigs" and "dollar diplomacy," and 
its notices of North American happenings too 
often consist of harrowing catalogues of lynch- 
ings, murders, divorces, graft, pork barrel poli- 
tics and other public and private obliquities, 
conveying the impression that of such is Anglo- 
Saxon democracy. Cartoonists exhaust their 
ingenuity in maligning and deriding the United 
States, a favorite device being some variation 
of the theme of the Yankee fisherman, his line 
labelled "intervention," angling with gratifying 
success in the troubled sea of revolution. 

Latin Americans never tire of quoting, with 
comments, Secretary Olney's famous interpre- 
tation of the Monroe Doctrine in the Venezuela 
affair of 1895: "Today the United States is 
practically sovereign on this continent, and its 
fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines 
its interposition." "Away, then, with this 
benevolent Monroe Doctrine!" exclaims one. 
"It is very far from a doctrine by which all 



172 THE WORLD PERIL 

interests may be protected, or may be held 
equally sacred in all the countries it concerns. 
Instead of that, it is a doctrine of absorption, 
and annihilates the interests of the parties af- 
fected. . . . The Doctrine of Monroe is the shield 
and buckler of United States aggression; it is 
a sword suspended by a hair over the Latin 
continent. ' ' Instances in our history of callous- 
ness, of unscrupulous ambition and of disregard 
of the rights of weaker states are paraded un- 
wearyingly, and too many Latin American re- 
publics harbor memories of indignities sustained 
at our hands. What, it is inquired, has the senti- 
mental, spontaneous, generous Latin in common 
with the shrewd, calculating, cold blooded, dollar 
worshipping Yankee? 

Fortunately there is a brighter side to the 
picture ; fortunately there have been, north and 
south of the canal, philanthropists of sympathy 
and vision, believers in the essential brotherli- 
ness and benevolence of humanity, who, instead 
of scouring the past and the present for incen- 
tives to inter-American distrust and ill will, 
have devoted themselves to introducing the 
Americas to each other, on Charles Lamb's 
principle that one will not hate a man he knows 
well, and to preaching the gospel of confidence 
and cooperation. 

Of late years these efforts have become gen- 
eral and more efficiently coordinated. Many of 
them are familiar to every citizen at all con- 
versant with current happenings. The Pan- 
American Union, expressing its object in its 



THE TWO AMERICAS 173 

name, maintained by the twenty-one American 
republics in its palace in Washington, labors 
constantly for better acquaintance and comity 
between the Americas. Visits of distinguished 
citizens — statesmen, scientists and financiers — 
are exchanged. The year 1915 was signalized 
by the assembling of a Pan-American Financial 
Congress at Washington, presided over by the 
Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, 
to study financial questions of inter- American 
significance ; and this body created a permanent 
"International High Commission, ' ' with a sub- 
committee in each American country, to canvass 
such subjects as uniformity of maritime laws, 
arbitration of commercial disputes, wireless 
communications and a postal congress. Since 
1908, Pan-American scientific congresses of in- 
creasingly distinguished membership have as- 
sembled from time to time to listen to papers 
and to formulate policies on such widely diver- 
gent topics as anthropology, astronomy, con- 
servation of natural resources, agriculture, 
irrigation, forestry, education, engineering, in- 
ternational law, public law, jurisprudence, min- 
ing and metallurgy, economic geology, applied 
chemistry, public health and medical science, 
transportation, commerce, finance and taxation. 
Eminent scholars have passed from continent 
to continent, giving courses on the history and 
economics of their countries in leading univer- 
sities. Free scholarships have brought about 
the interchange of students. Periodicals are 
devoted to acquainting the American peoples 



174 THE WORLD PERIL 

with each other 's point of view. The daily press 
is awaking to its responsibilities in the cam- 
paign of education, witness the establishment 
of a reciprocal news service between our United 
Press and La Nacion of Argentina in 1916. 

It is not, however, from sporadic protesta- 
tions of amity by individuals or states that the 
Pan-American rapprochement, of which we are 
beginning to appreciate the value and the need, 
can come. Unions of the hearts of peoples, as 
distinct from the time serving, self seeking 
leagues of governments, predicate confidence, 
and confidence is born of deeds, not of words, 
and of deeds reflecting an inward spirit of char- 
ity, so consistent in its operation as not to de- 
generate into hypocrisy when self-interest is 
concerned. Latin Americans cannot be too 
much blamed if they have regarded incidents 
like the Mexican War and the acquisition of 
the Canal Zone as more solid evidences of the 
true meaning of the Monroe Doctrine than the 
platitudes of our public men at Pan-American 
banquets. If our physical proportions were 
those of the sparrow and Latin America's those 
of the hawk, and if in the past we had seen 
the sharpness of the big bird's talons demon- 
strated at the expense of other sparrows no 
larger than ourselves, we should have some dif- 
ficulty in watching his flight in our direction with 
unruffled equanimity. 

Happily for us, not all the weight in the scales 
is against us. The compelling motive behind 
our war with Spain was sympathy for suffering 



THE TWO AMERICAS 175 

peoples ; our unexpected withdrawal from Cuba 
gained credit for our plighted word ; our refusal 
to traffic in the recent misfortunes of Mexico 
has won us friends (for whatever mistakes our 
Administration may have made there, it has 
shown a conception of the moral obligation to 
forbearance resting on a strong Power in its 
relations with a weak one, and an appreciation 
of the relative importance of a letter of the law 
insistence on the personal and property rights 
of our citizen adventurers in Mexico on the one 
hand and an interminably exploited nation's 
struggles for more endurable conditions of life 
on the other) ; and our prompt acceptance of 
the proffered mediation of the ABC Powers 
in our Mexican imbroglio and our invitation to 
six Latin American states, including one from 
Central America, to join us in determining 
which of the contending factions in Mexico was 
worthy of recognition have accomplished more 
than rivers of rhetoric to make Pan- American- 
ism a reality. High minded men have found in 
this novel disposition of the United States to 
admit her neighbors to her counsels on Amer- 
ican questions the key to a real and permanent 
entente cordiale. 

One fact stands clearly forward for the guid- 
ance of those who are working toward that end. 
Pan- Americanism must be based on cooperation, 
not on tutelage. Many of the Latin American 
states have outgrown all need of leading strings 
and are ready to meet us, if at all, as equal sov- 
ereignties. If any one sentiment peculiarly 



176 THE WORLD PERIL 

characterizes Latin Americans it is a lofty pride 
in their racial and national traditions, a keen 
sense of the meaning of democracy and of the 
dignity of independence. This is as true of the 
backward and turbulent little republics of Cen- 
tral America as of Argentina or Chile or Brazil. 
Someone has said with truth that they all prefer 
governing themselves, no matter how badly, to 
being governed by us, no matter how well. Our 
intercourse with them abounds in evidences that 
this is so. Only the other day the legislature 
of Porto Rico, in thanking us for the gift of 
citizenship in the United States, concluded its 
address with the pertinent suggestion that we 
logically complete the good work by conferring 
on them the boon of independence. A nation 
that has been brought up from infancy on the 
principle that "governments derive their just 
powers from the consent of the governed' ' 
should not find as much difficulty as we have 
sometimes done in comprehending this state of 
mind. One senses a disquieting analogy between 
the air of condescending superiority with which 
we have too often offended our Latin friends 
and the Teutonic conception of a world civiliz- 
ing "Kultur." 

The new watchword of cooperation finds ex- 
pression in the recent utterances of many emi- 
nent North and South Americans, and in its 
name those of our neighbors who have given us 
their confidence are interpreting our principles 
to their countrymen. 

Particularly interesting is the Latin discus- 



THE TWO AMERICAS 177 

sion of the Monroe Doctrine, for, as conducted 
in the new spirit of constructive rather than 
destructive criticism, it has helped us to clarify 
our own somewhat befogged conception of this 
ancient instrument, to recognize the accretions 
which have impaired its usefulness and to re- 
shape it as a vehicle for progressive Pan- 
Americanism. 

Briefly, the Latin American formula for a 
purified, rejuvenated Monroe Doctrine may be 
summarized in the phrase, integrity and inde- 
pendence, both political and economic, for all 
the American states. It embodies, asserts 
Senor Alejandro Alvarez of Chile, "the aspira- 
tions, not merely of the United States, but of 
America as a whole, and has nothing in common 
with that policy of imperialism and hegemony 
. . . confined to the United States alone. ... In 
truth, the Americans of the North apparently 
desire to assume, in certain quarters of the 
American continent, a patronage, a directorship, 
nay, a positive control, analogous to that recog- 
nized in Europe, especially regarding Oriental 
affairs, as appertaining to the Concert of the 
Powers. . . . Though it was framed by a Presi- 
dent of the North American Eepublic, the Mon- 
roe Doctrine none the less corresponded to a 
principle and a necessity which were common 
to both Americas. . . . The Latin States regard 
every attack upon the freedom of a sister re- 
public as an attempt upon their own." The 
Monroe Doctrine "is in fact a formula of inde- 
pendence,' ' says Senor Luis M, Drago. "It 



178 THE WOELD PERIL 

creates no obligations and no responsibilities 
between the nations of America, but simply calls 
upon all of them, with their own means and 
without foreign aid, to exclude from within their 
respective frontiers the jurisdiction of Euro- 
pean Powers. Proclaimed by the United States 
in the interest of their own peace and security, 
the other republics of the continent have in their 
turn proceeded to adopt it with an eye alone to 
their own individual welfare and internal tran- 
quillity. This moral consort of intentions and 
tendencies constitutes in itself alone a great 
force without need of treaties or formal alli- 
ances or definite obligations. Thus understood, 
the Monroe Doctrine, which in the end is nothing 
more than the expression of the will of the peo- 
ple to maintain their liberty, assures the inde- 
pendence of the states of that continent in 
respect to one another as well as in relation to 
the Powers of Europe.' ' "In principle, the 
Monroe Doctrine is an essential article in the 
public code of the new world," is the opinion 
of Dr. Garcia-Calderon. "It is only the brutal 
expression of the doctrine, the cynical imperial- 
ism which is deduced from it, which becomes 
dangerous to the moral unity of the continent. 
The wisest statesmen have no thought of di- 
vorcing this doctrine from the future history 
of America, even when they criticize its excesses 
most severely." While the imperialistic ambi- 
tions of the United States have sacrificed the 
integrity of the Caribbean countries "toward 
South America its intervention deserves only 



THE TWO AMERICAS 179 

respect. The purely selfish interest of the 
United States evidently lay in the acceptance 
of war and anarchy, in accordance with the 
classical formula ' Divide and rule'; yet the 
United States has kept the peace. From Pan- 
ama to the La Plata it is working for the union 
of the peoples and for civilization. Here, then, 
is an aspect of the Monroe Doctrine of perpetual 
usefulness : the struggle against the wars which 
threaten to ruin the New World, still poor and 
thinly populated — intervention with the olive 
branch. In stimulating the union of South 
American republics, the United States is at the 
same time protecting its own commercial inter- 
ests, menaced by this perpetual turmoil. If its 
action were to halt there, if it renounced all 
territorial acquisition and set its face against 
all interference with the internal affairs of every 
state, the doctrine so often condemned would 
seem born anew and no one would dare to criti- 
cize its efficacy." 

No point in the Latin American conception 
of the Monroe Doctrine finds more emphatic ex- 
pression than that of its utter incompatibility 
with any spirit of imperialism or further exten- 
sion of its territories by the United States. The 
discomfort of the sparrow in the presence of 
the hawk constantly appears. The imperialistic 
disposition on our part has been the chief 
ground of friction in the past, and, unless we 
abandon it, will continue to be so. As Senor A. 
de Manos- Albas puts it : * * The means to accom- 
plish unity of sentiment and to dispel the mis- 



180 THE WORLD PERIL 

givings between the United States and the Latin 
American republics is not far to seek. It is only 
required to amplify the Monroe declaration to 
the full extent of its logical development. . . . 
If the United States should declare that the era 
of conquest on the American continent has been 
closed to all and forever, beginning with them- 
selves, the brooding storm of distrust will dis- 
appear from the Latin American mind, and an 
international cordiality of incalculable possi- 
bilities will ensue, not only for the welfare of 
the American nations, but universally for the 
cause of freedom and democracy." 

In so far as the utterances of our public men 
best qualified to voice the nation's will can re- 
assure our friends to the southward, they have 
little cause for complaint, for the official pro- 
nouncements of this country's policy conform 
almost verbatim to the formula of the Latin 
writers. As long ago as 1906 Elihu Root de- 
clared to a South American audience : "We do 
not wish to win victories, we desire no territory 
but our own, nor a sovereignty more extensive 
than that which we desire to retain over our- 
selves. We consider that the independence and 
the equal rights of the smallest and weakest 
members of the family of nations deserve as 
much respect as those of the great empires. We 
pretend to no right, privilege or power that we 
do not freely concede to each one of the Amer- 
ican republics." In the same spirit, ex-Presi- 
dent Roosevelt said at Montevideo : 1 1 The Mon- 
roe Doctrine is in no sense a doctrine of one 



THE TWO AMERICAS 181 

sided advantage. ... It should be invoked by 
our nations in a spirit of mutual respect, and 
on a footing of complete equality of both right 
and obligation. Therefore, as soon as any coun- 
try of the New World stands on a sufficiently 
high footing of orderly liberty and achieved suc- 
cess, of self-respecting strength, it becomes a 
guarantor of the doctrine on a footing of com- 
plete equality, ... so that," as regards such 
countries, "all that the United States has to 
do is to stand ready, as one of the great brother- 
hood of American nations, to join with them in 
upholding the doctrine, should they at any time 
desire, in the interest of the Western Hemi- 
sphere, that we should do so." 

A notable address by Secretary of State Lan- 
sing before the Pan-American Scientific Con- 
gress at Washington in 1915 contained these 
words : "I speak only for the Government of the 
United States, but in doing so I am sure that I 
express sentiments which will find an echo in 
every republic represented here when I say that 
the might of this country will never be exercised 
in a spirit of greed to wrest from a neighboring 
state its territory or possessions. The ambi- 
tions of this republic do not lie in the path of 
conquest, but in the paths of peace and justice. 
Whenever and wherever we can we will stretch 
forth a hand to those who need help. If the 
sovereignty of a sister republic is menaced from 
overseas, the power of the United States and, 
I hope and believe, the united power of the 
American republics will constitute a bulwark 



182 THE WOKLD PERIL 

which will protect the independence and integ- 
rity of their neighbors from unjust invasion or 
aggression. The American family of nations 
might well take for its motto that of Dumas 's 
famous musketeers, 'One for all; all for one.' 
If I have correctly interpreted Pan- American- 
ism from the standpoint of the relation of our 
Government with those beyond the seas, it is 
in entire harmony with the Monroe Doctrine. 
The Monroe Doctrine is a national policy of the 
United States ; Pan- Americanism is an interna- 
tional policy of the Americas.' ' 

As to the practical shape which this ideal of 
Pan-American cooperation is to take, there are 
difficulties. The dream of a tribunal, in which 
all the nations of the two continents, varying 
extremely in size, civilization and responsibility, 
shall be equally represented, invested with full 
power to hear and determine inter-American 
controversies, is now quite generally recognized 
to be chimerical. The United States, with a 
population greater than that of all Latin Amer- 
ica together and excelling even more in wealth 
than in mere numbers, would hardly care to 
submit its vital interests, in a controversy with 
a Latin state, to the arbitrament of a body com- 
pletely Latin in its make up, which, however 
disposed it might be to do justice, could not 
possibly free itself entirely from racial and tra- 
ditional prejudices; nor would an organization 
based on population or wealth be any more ac- 
ceptable to Latin America. Questions of the 
weight to be given each state in determining a 



THE TWO AMERICAS 183 

policy or in imposing an assessment would raise 
the same difficulties. Professor Albert Bushnell 
Hart suggests the analogy of the "New England 
Confederation ' ' of our colonial days, which went 
to pieces because Massachusetts surpassed all 
her associates combined in population and re- 
sources. 

A more natural and workable plan seems to 
be a general acceptance of the principle that, 
in complications of inter- American significance, 
no single state shall act impulsively on its own 
judgment and interest alone, but shall welcome 
the counsel and, if feasible, the cooperation of 
such of its neighbors as may be best fitted to 
render such service. There need be no obliga- 
tion to accept the advice given; but the very 
bringing together of eminent men with differing 
points of view, the interchange of opinion and 1 
argument, and the moral necessity of squaring 
a contemplated policy with enlightened prin- 
ciples of Pan- Americanism are bound to raise 
the issue above the realms of mere partisanship, 
to free it from ignorance and provincialism, and 
to eliminate misunderstandings. 

The possibilities of an arrangement of this 
sort were demonstrated by the ABC media- 
tion conference at Niagara Falls in 1914, where 
diplomats from Argentina, Brazil and Chile met 
with representatives of Mexico and the United 
States in an effort to compose their difficulties, 
and in the joint deliberations of the next year 
which resulted in the recognition of Carranza. 
The actual accomplishments of these confer- 



184 THE WOBLD PEEIL 

ences were inconsiderable by comparison with 
the contribution they made to the cause of inter- 
American comity. If, as one writer holds, what 
was done by them cannot be undone, if a prece- 
dent has been created for the right of the Latin 
republics to be heard on American questions, 
the United States, face to face with the future 
necessity of dealing with nations of constantly 
augmenting self -consciousness and strength and 
of recognizing eventually a "balance of power' ' 
in America, may well be congratulated for 
adapting itself so readily to an inevitable situa- 
tion. The same writer goes on to say: "The 
Western Hemisphere has, at last, been swept 
into the realm where interests dominate in the 
government of states, and this pitiable but Dra- 
conian principle of collective human develop- 
ment, when human nature is organized nationally 
in societies, is now about to operate as a dis- 
turbing and corrosive element on that purer 
American idealism which the people and most 
of the political leaders in both of the American 
continents had blindly supposed would always 
distinguish their happier world from the old one 
of the wicked kings." To which it may be re- 
plied that if actualities rather than "Draconian 
principles" had occupied the minds of Amer- 
icans since the days when the Monroe Doctrine 
saw the light, we should perhaps be farther 
than we are at present on the road to an under- 
standing of one another's national ambitions 
and to an adjustment of them to some practical 
live and let live arrangement. The sooner we 



THE TWO AMERICAS 185 

recognize the inevitability of the "principle of 
nationalities ' ' and base our international rela- 
tions upon it, the better for all concerned. 

Another step in the right direction was Mr. 
Bryan's treaties insuring at least a year of in- 
vestigation and inquiry into the merits of dis- 
putes before resort to force by the signatory 
Powers. "The high contracting parties agree 
that all disputes between them, of every nature 
whatsoever, which diplomacy shall fail to ad- 
just, shall be submitted for investigation and 
report to an International Commission . . . and 
they agree not to declare war or begin hostilities 
during such investigation and report.' ' The 
parties to the dispute are in no sense bound by 
the commission's findings, but the cooling of 
hot blood, a full knowledge of the facts in the 
case and the moral force of a just decision will 
be sufficient to save many an international 
friendship. 

Practical Pan- Americanism, then, should mean 
not the formation of a formal league, binding 
together in unnatural union peoples widely di- 
vergent in race, culture and feeling, but rather 
a spontaneous and candid association of Amer- 
ican states which, while recognizing the inevita- 
ble and salutary principle of nationalities, shall 
bring their combined intelligence and resources 
to the solution of American problems. 

From the point of view of the United States, 
the cause of practical Pan- Americanism would 
be greatly subserved by a process of amalgama- 
tion in Latin America which would substitute 



186 THE WORLD PERIL 

for large numbers of restless and all but help- 
less small states a few large ones, possessing 
sufficient population, territory and wealth to af- 
ford some assurance of eventually becoming 
strong and self-reliant Powers. A union of the 
Central American republics, for example, would 
be an unmixed blessing to us, relieving us of 
responsibilities which bring us little compensa- 
tion, cause us no end of worry and lay us open 
to persistent offensive imputations; and some 
of the smaller states of South America would 
derive obvious advantages from merging them- 
selves with their larger neighbors. But the 
Latin seems to cherish a sentimental affection 
for old boundaries which North American demo- 
crats must respect, if they cannot approve. 

Most Latin Americans are ready to acquit us 
of any sinister designs south of the countries 
bordering on the Caribbean. It is the develop- 
ment of our system of defence of the Panama 
Canal, with its necessary ramifications in the 
form of naval stations and protectorates, that 
has aroused their fears. Our fault, in their eyes, 
lies not in taking precaution for our safety nor 
in anticipating the designs of European nations 
in American waters — for in these respects their 
interests are identical with our own — but in act- 
ing in an unneighborly and often mysterious 
isolation which too often has left them in the 
dark as to our intentions, and which has in- 
volved infringements upon the liberties of peo- 
ples whose needs we have incompletely under- 
stood. 



THE TWO AMERICAS 187 

Here, as elsewhere, it is the principle of co- 
operation that can meet the difficulty. Certainly, 
after the precedent of the Niagara Falls con- 
ference, we can have no notion of interfering 
in South American affairs without consulting 
and acting with Argentina, Brazil and Chile, and 
probably with other Latin American Powers, 
and even in the Caribbean, where our supremacy 
is now well established, it is inconceivable that 
a people committed to the principles of democ- 
racy will go on forever ruling hundreds of thou- 
sands of Dominicans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, 
Cubans or even Porto Ricans against their will. 
We cannot arrogate exclusively to ourselves a 
sovereignty whose sole sanction is our own be- 
lief in the infallibility of our judgment in order- 
ing the lives of others, and it is a fair question 
whether a divine commission to regulate the 
Americas is possessed by a state which can re- 
gard a trust, like that we assumed in stricken 
Santo Domingo, as an opportunity to create 
sinecures for "deserving Democrats.' ' Prob- 
lems which concern all America must be dealt 
with by the common action of at least the strong 
American states. 

To the ideal of American solidarity the war 
in Europe has contributed fresh impulses. The 
original appeal of the Monroe Doctrine to Latin 
Americans lay in its championship of democracy 
in the New World, and this feature alone has 
seemed to them to justify its existence and to 
constitute its value. Viewing the European 
cataclysm, the soulless designs of monarchs, the 



188 THE WOELD PERIL 

contempt for treaties, the worship and triumph 
of force, the crushing of the weak, and, as the 
one bright ray in the gloom, the spectacle of 
peoples emancipated by blood from agelong 
tyrannies, they have felt, in the words of one 
of their statesmen, that "the world's salvation 
is here in America, through the influence of a 
democracy that means peace and justice, and 
one that we must stand by and defend. ' ' 

It is not entirely from selfish motives that 
sympathy for the cause of the Allies has spread 
throughout Latin America and that state after 
state has quarrelled with Germany and voiced 
its protest against her crass disregard of others ' 
rights. A clearer understanding of the sacred- 
ness of the rights of men and of nations has 
come to all Americans alike. It has, may we 
not say, drawn the world's democracies closer 
together, not only in economic interdependence, 
but in sympathy and pride T To the Latin Amer- 
icans must have occurred the question: How 
would their cherished independence have fared, 
had not Monroe 's warning to autocrats fortified 
them in the days of their weakness against the 
fate of Serbia and Belgium, or had the heart- 
less and cynical Prussian been substituted in 
their history for the rough and blundering, but 
withal not unkindly, democratic Yankee uncle, 
who, possessing the power to coerce and exploit 
them, has, on the whole, been content to let 
them live their own lives in their own way, pro- 
vided they kept the peace and left Europe no 
excuse for meddling uncomfortably close to his 



THE TWO AMERICAS 189 

own door? Whether or not such feelings have 
played their part, the war must serve to draw 
closer the spiritual as well as the material bonds 
uniting the American states, for a conception 
of responsibility to the cause of democracy, 
whose spirit is human equality, must inspire the 
ideal of comradeship which has come increas- 
ingly to distinguish inter- American relations. 2 

2 Among the many aids in the preparation of this chapter, 
special mention should be made of Jones's "Caribbean In- 
terests of the United States, ' ' Filsinger 's ' ' Exporting to Latin 
America," the proceedings of the National Foreign Trade 
Conventions, the articles in the "Annals of the American 
Academy of Political and Social Science," and those by Mr. 
George Marvin in the World's Work. The author is grateful 
for statistical and other data kindly furnished by the Bureau 
of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, the Pan-American Union, 
and Mr. O. P. Austin, statistician of the National City Bank 
of New York. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE WORLD PERIL AND AMERICAN 
INTERESTS IN THE FAR EAST 

Mason W. Tyler 

The present conflict has been rightly called 
a world war. Into it have been drawn Europe, 
Africa, Asia, the islands of the Pacific, and the 
Americas. And the causes and results, as well 
as the war itself, will probably be found world- 
wide in their scope. But the United States is 
not at least equally interested in every phase 
of this struggle. The majority of Americans 
would probably agree that our interest in the 
solution of the African problem — to take one 
instance — is decidedly secondary to that of 
other Powers such as England and France. 
Provided that justice is done, that the balance 
of power is not endangered, that any trade we 
may have is not unduly interfered with, we may 
leave this problem for others to settle. But 
there are regions in which the United States 
has long been interested, and of these perhaps 
the most important, outside of South America, 
is the problem of the Far East. It was our 
fleet, under Commodore Perry, which opened 
Japan to the world ; we took a leading share in 
the opening of China. The Open Door in China 
is an American policy, formulated by an Amer- 

190 



THE FAR EAST 191 

ican Secretary of State and sustained by Amer- 
ican diplomacy. If the war is likely to affect 
this part of the world such effects cannot fail 
to be of interest and of vital importance to the 
United States and deserving of our most care- 
ful study. 

To write a history of the problem of the Far 
East would require a volume in itself. But it 
would appear that there are three questions 
whose answers would, probably, go far to clear 
up the situation as it exists and to bring out 
such changes as may occur. First of all : what 
is the origin of the present situation and how 
far is it the result of the present war? Sec- 
ondly: what are the aims of the United States 
in the Far East and how far are they threatened 
by the present situation? Thirdly: is there any 
possible solution to be found for such difficulties 
as have arisen or are apt to arise in the future 1 
Such a treatment can only cover certain phases 
of the problem; it is by no means a complete 
study, but it is to be hoped that it may help 
Americans to see our part in the problem more 
clearly. 

To explain the present situation one must go 
back to the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1906. Be- 
fore that date the greatest danger in the Far 
East lay in the policy and aggressions of the 
Russian Empire. Backed by Germany, who 
seems to have felt that this policy kept Russia 
involved in the Far East and therefore unable 
to influence the European balance, Russia 
had pushed down through Manchuria and was 



192 THE WORLD PERIL 

laying plans which seemed to aim at an ultimate 
protectorate over north China. Against this 
policy the other Powers vitally interested, Eng- 
land, Japan and the United States, had been 
acting in concert. The two former had formed a 
defensive alliance, and the United States, seem- 
ingly unwilling to take any definite steps, con- 
fined herself to diplomatic representations. But 
the defeat of Russia changed absolutely the sit- 
uation. The war left Japan the predominant 
Power in Corea and Manchuria and besides 
this in the moral position of being the Power 
to whom, because of her strength and achieve- 
ments, the whole Far East looked for guidance. 
The result of later events on this moral position 
will be noted afterward. 

The history of the next eight years, 1906 to 
1914, illustrates how hopeless it is to attempt 
to isolate the Far East from European events. 
Russia 's Far Eastern policy had left her almost 
without influence in Europe, and Germany and 
Austria had been able to pursue their Balkan 
plans in comparative peace. But after 1906 and 
more clearly after 1908 Russian policy, under 
the leadership of the Pan-Slavs, began to pivot 
back to Europe and to take a constantly in- 
creasing interest in the affairs of the Balkans 
and the Near East. But just as her Far East- 
ern policy had forced a sacrifice of her Euro- 
pean policy, so this new European policy forced 
her to moderate and sacrifice her interests in 
the Far East. As a result, in 1908, she liqui- 
dated — to use the phrase of her then Foreign 



THE FAR EAST 193 

Minister M. Isvolski — her interests in the Far 
East and two years later signed an alliance with 
Japan out of which the latter drew most of the 
practical advantages and which left her to fol- 
low her own plans in the Far East secure 
against Russian hostility and with even the 
possibility of Russian aid. In the same way 
as European affairs withdrew from the Far 
East one of the great moderating influences 
against Japan, Russia; so it followed the same 
course with another, England. In 1906 England 
was still vitally interested in the Far East, but 
as the German danger progressed it was neces- 
sary more and more to orientate her policy from 
European considerations and to leave the west- 
ern Pacific more and more to itself. The de- 
fence against a possible German attack forced 
England to concentrate her strength in the 
North Sea and to leave the defence of her 
Asiatic interests to her ally, Japan, and to pay 
for that defence by allowing that ally a more 
or less free hand to carry out her policy. As 
a result Japan in 1914 had secured an almost 
free hand for her dealings in eastern Asia. 

And she had made good use of her oppor- 
tunities. Between 1906 and 1910 Japan had an- 
nexed Corea, a process which was marked by 
repeated breaches of faith on the part of the 
Japanese Government. During the same period 
and in the next four years she had pushed her 
control in southern Manchuria to the detriment 
of treaty rights and in defiance of the principle 
of the Open Door. And yet it ought to be 



194 THE WORLD PERIL 

brought out in defence of Japanese policy dur- 
ing this period that Japan is almost vitally 
dependent on Corea and Manchuria for her food 
supplies and raw products. To allow these dis- 
tricts to fall into the hands of another Power 
would be almost suicidal, and the Japanese ef- 
forts to chain them so thoroughly that they 
cannot so escape have at least this justification. 
But the breaches of treaty right, the broken 
promises, the attempt to monopolize all trade 
in Japanese hands leave an unpleasant impres- 
sion on almost all outsiders who study the 
Japanese policy of those years. 

The outbreak of the European war in 1914 
was of no small aid to Japan in her aims. In 
the first place it completed the withdrawal of 
England and Russia referred to above ; and, in 
addition, it forced these Powers to call on Japan 
to defend their interests in eastern Asia, for 
which defence Japan could be enabled to de- 
mand payment in the shape of a free hand in 
China. Again the Japanese Government pre- 
pared to make every use of its favorable posi- 
tion. Soon after the outbreak of the European 
war it decided to use the opportunity to 
expel from the Far East one of the European 
Powers, Germany. Germany had been one of 
the sharers in European imperialism in China, 
where she had possessed since 1898 the port of 
Kiao-Chow and extensive mining rights in the 
Shantung peninsula behind it. As an imperial- 
istic Power her policy in China had been much 
like that of the others, not much either better 



THE FAR EAST 195 

or worse. But, to her, the Far East had always 
been a secondary interest, inferior to her in- 
terests in the Balkans and Turkey; useful as 
a pawn in the game of world policy more than 
as a field for direct German influence. In the 
Far East she seems to have, in the main, fol- 
lowed the policy of Bismarck who always strove 
to lure presumably hostile Powers into colonial 
expansion either in order that they might quar- 
rel over the spoils or in order that they might 
dissipate their energies in distant adventures 
and leave other spheres of interest, more vital 
to Germany, free for the aims of the latter to 
be attained. Kiao-Chow was an outpost of em- 
pire, a germ of future empire perhaps, but for 
the time being merely an outpost, which Ger- 
many would probably have sacrificed to attain 
her more immediate and more vital aims. But 
when Japan demanded the withdrawal of the 
garrison and the surrender of the colony, Ger- 
man honor demanded that the post should be 
held to the end. The German garrison made 
a gallant defence of its lonely little stronghold 
and only capitulated to overwhelming force. 

The capture of Kiao-Chow marks the begin- 
ning of the present stage of Japan's march to 
empire. It was of the greatest value to Japan 
in that it gave her a claim on the gratitude of 
the Allies who might moderate her future pol- 
icy and at the same time a claim on the gratitude 
of China, in whose interests she claimed — in 
somewhat equivocal language — the expedition 
had taken place. And it was to China that she 



196 THE WOKLD PERIL 

turned for payment for the service, real or 
pretended, that she had done, and in this claim 
for payment threw off the mask with which her 
imperialism had, thus far, been covered. For 
her actions in Corea and Manchuria Japan 
seems to have had at least the shadow of an 
excuse, but her demands, now made on China, 
were nothing more nor less than the bullying of 
a weak Power by a stronger. They may be 
divided into two classes, first the class of de- 
mands which aimed at economic control and 
economic exploitation of China by Japan, sec- 
ond a class of demands — the so-called Group 
V — which would have given to Japan a political 
control in China as well. If China had accepted 
the entire series of demands made on her she 
would have been placed, to a certain extent, 
under the tutelage and protection of Japan. 
But China resisted. And during the delay which 
this resistance brought about it was shown that 
Japan 's position of predominance, relative 
though it might be, was not absolute. For not 
only the United States, but also, after some 
delay, England interfered to urge the Japanese 
Government to modify and soften the claims it 
was making. Probably Japan saw it had gone 
too far, at least for the present. And so the 
political part of her demands was quietly al- 
lowed to drop, while the economic part was 
pressed with a flourish of an ultimatum. To 
this China yielded and the question was, for the 
time being, closed. 

Japan, however, made no small gains in ex- 



THE FAR EAST 197 

tending its power and influence in the Chinese 
Republic. She had forced China to recognize 
her predominant position in Manchuria, secured 
an extension of the lease of Port Arthur and 
the Manchurian Railways to 99 years, and full 
rights to establish in that region any Japanese 
enterprise. In Shantung she not only secured 
all the economic rights hitherto held by Ger- 
many, but also greatly extended them, including 
the right to build, under Japanese control, the 
new railway opening up the northern part of 
the peninsula. She secured the right to control 
and almost monopolize the great coal and iron 
fields in the Yangtze valley. Finally she se- 
cured at least a prior right to the development 
of Fu-Kien province in southern China. Taken 
all together, these concessions constitute the 
commencement, at least, of an economic monop- 
oly for Japan in China. Shantung and the coal 
and iron fields of the Yangtze valley are, to- 
gether, the great mineral fields of China as at 
present developed, and both of these have now 
passed under the control of Japan. The effect 
of such a state of affairs on the economic posi- 
tion of the other nations in China is reasonably 
obvious. 

Such, then, is the present situation. The war 
in Europe has forced the attention of England 
and Russia away from the Far East and has 
left their partner, Japan, predominant there. 
The latter has used this predominance, as all 
imperialistic Powers are apt to do, with no little 
ruthlessness to attain their ends. But it has not 



198 THE WORLD PERIL 

been all pure gain. Her ally, England, has been 
forced by the latest events to take a position 
opposed to her, and the probabilities are that 
the old alliance and friendship of the years be- 
fore the war will not be renewed. Moreover 
in 1906 Japan was in a strong position of moral 
leadership in eastern Asia: the other nations 
looked to her for training and guidance in their 
development. It would now appear that much 
of this has been lost. The treatment of Corea, 
the policy pursued in Manchuria, the demands 
on China have cost Japan in moral prestige. 
In the years immediately following 1906 many 
young Chinese students went to Japan for their 
training. But the stream soon turned to other 
quarters, notably to America, and many of those 
who had gone to Japanese training schools came 
home in disgust. Every indication from China 
seems to show that Japan is now regarded there, 
not as the helpful guide, but as a danger — a 
Power to be feared. Indeed it would appear 
that much of the dread and dislike with which 
Russian policy was regarded in the years be- 
fore the Russo-Japanese war has now turned 
toward Japan. Will Japan see this, and modify 
her course accordingly, or will she continue her 
imperialistic projects? That question the fu- 
ture alone can answer. 

Thus far I have treated the problem of the 
Far East in its Asiatic aspects merely, and 
without any consideration of the American in- 
terests involved and the effect it may have on 
us. But the United States, as was said at the 



THE FAR EAST 199 

beginning of this article, has a very vital in- 
terest in this problem and cannot be left un- 
moved by any changes that occur in it. What 
then are our interests in the Far East? In 
the first place we have a very strong interest 
in the maintenance of the integrity of China. 
For the last dozen years, and particularly since 
the establishment of the Chinese Republic, that 
Power has looked to us for support and guidance 
in its attempt to become a living and up-to-date 
member of the world group of Powers. From 
America they have chosen many of their ad- 
visers, and to America they have sent many of 
their future leaders to gain the benefit of Amer- 
ican training. To abandon China under such 
circumstances would be almost the betrayal of 
a trust. Thus we must oppose the attempts of 
Japan or any other Power to secure such posi- 
tion or influence in China as will retard or warp 
the development of the Chinese Republic into 
a first class independent Power. In the second 
place we have an old and well established trade 
with China which ought to be defended by every 
means consonant with justice. To this end, and 
in order to prevent the constant trade bicker- 
ings so dangerous to the peace of the Far East, 
we have originated and urged the policy known 
as the "Open Door." 

The history of this policy, at least in its later 
developments, is rather sad reading for Amer- 
icans. For it can hardly be denied that of late 
it has lost and is steadily losing much of its 
power. For this loss circumstances, such as the 



200 THE WORLD PERIL 

withdrawal from the Far East of our co-de- 
fender of this policy, Great Britain, are cer- 
tainly partly responsible. But at least a share 
of the blame for its relative failure must fall on 
us for lack of firmness in its enforcement against 
those Powers whose policy was opposed to it. 
It is probably true that a majority of American 
citizens would not have approved of going to 
war for its maintenance, but that fact does not 
entirely excuse the seeming diplomatic supine- 
ness with which we have allowed its infraction 
or the blindness with which we, at least on one 
occasion, " cried out peace where there was no 
peace.' ' If we are to make this policy felt in 
the Far East we must be prepared to exercise 
more strength, at least diplomatically, in secur- 
ing its enforcement. 

The policy of the "Open Door" as originally 
laid down by Secretary Hay in 1899 seems to 
have comprised merely the establishment of 
equal opportunity for the nationals of all 
Powers within the already established ' ' spheres 
of influence" — areas which certain Powers 
had staked out for economic exploitation by 
members of their own nation. But it would 
appear that the fundamental idea of the Hay 
note went yet further, that it marked the desire 
of the United States not only to limit the use 
of these "spheres of influence," but also to pre- 
vent their erection in the future. This extension 
of the original policy seems more clearly 
brought out in the note of Secretary Hay to the 
Russian Government dated February 1, 1902, 



THE FAK EAST 201 

in which he protests against the erection of an 
exclusive Russian sphere of influence in Man- 
churia and styles it a violation of the principle 
of the ' ' Open Door. ' ' But it is somewhat doubt- 
ful if the United States can balk the granting 
of concessions to various national groups, or 
if it would be wise to do so if she could. China 
is in great need of development, and absolutely 
lacking in the capital required for it. And yet it 
is doubtful if, under present circumstances, cap- 
ital would care to venture into Chinese develop- 
ment unless associated in national groups more 
or less under the supervision of their govern- 
ments who would protect them in local disturb- 
ances or in difficulties with the Chinese Govern- 
ment. But we have, in this, at least the germ 
of a "sphere of influence." As things now 
stand, we are face to face with a dilemma: 
either to retard the development of China, or 
else to allow the erection of what may easily 
become "spheres of influence" and break up 
the Chinese Republic. But might not a way be 
devised which will avoid both difficulties? 

The root of the difficulty appears to be in the 
nature of the power that protects the capitalist 
in his work of development. It seems to be in 
the fact that this protection is left to the in- 
dividual governments, some of whom are im- 
perialistic and anxious to extend in every pos- 
sible way the interests of their nationals; and 
is not in the hands of an international group 
in which the more moderate Powers can restrain 
the more imperialistic. But of late years a new 



202 THE WORLD PERIL 

principle appears to have been introduced, that 
of concerted action. It took the form of an in- 
ternational — or nearly international — loan. 
Originally loans were made by individual 
Powers, but between 1911 and 1913 a proposi- 
tion was brought forward for concerted action 
in this field : the so-called Six Power Loan. In 
this financial groups from the six Powers 
most interested in China — England, Germany, 
France, Russia, Japan and the United States — 
joined to furnish money to the Chinese Republic 
in return for a certain amount of supervision 
over China's economic development. This su- 
pervision, probably, went too far and consti- 
tuted, in a* measure, a weakening of China's 
sovereignty, and for that reason, as well as be- 
cause of a fear that it would involve us in 
Oriental complications, the support of the 
United States was withdrawn by President 
Wilson soon after his inauguration in 1913. 

But, while the Six Power Loan, as a specific 
measure, may have been open to grave objec- 
tions, it would appear that the principle of 
concerted action in the field of the economic 
development of China has distinct advantages. 
For it would insure to China a steady supply 
of foreign capital for its development, and at 
the same time would vest the control and pro- 
tection of this capital in an international body, 
in which the more moderate Powers could re- 
strain the others. Some sort of control over 
China seems necessary, at least until the new 
government is able to gain a firmer grip on the 



THE FAR EAST 203 

situation. And the temporary nature of such 
control could be secured in the agreements, and 
the ultimate return of the concessions to Chinese 
control could be made certain — as seems to have 
been already done — by agreement for their re- 
purchase at the end of a term of years. And 
at any rate such an international tutelage would 
seem to be an advance over the present anarchy 
and scramble for concessions. 

The present situation in the Far East, if the 
analysis given here be correct, is the result of 
the withdrawal of the moderating Powers in 
order to concentrate their attention on the Euro- 
pean war, leaving Japan practically mistress 
of the scene. To this must be added the dis- 
inclination of the United States to take a strong 
policy in eastern Asia, nor is there any prob- 
ability that this policy, whether right or wrong 
in the past, will be changed now that we have 
entered the European struggle. Japan can ex- 
pect, in all probability, to be able to enjoy her 
supremacy until the day when peace returns 
and the Powers are able to turn their attention 
again to these regions. We may then be able, 
in all probability, to count on England and, if 
we play our cards well, on the Russian Republic 
in our attempts to maintain the integrity of 
China and equal trade opportunities for all. To 
refuse to join with them or to refuse to take 
such steps as may be necessary to make this 
entente a strong factor in the Far East would 
appear to be the height of unwisdom. Alone 
we can do but little, with the aid of other Powers 



204 THE WORLD PERIL 

of like mind with ourselves much may be ac- 
complished. 

And what is to be our policy toward Japan? 
There would appear to be three courses open 
to us : to oppose her, to come to terms with her, 
or to withdraw from the affairs of the Far 
East. Japan is such a factor in the situation 
that for us to attempt any policy in eastern 
Asia without dealing with her appears little 
short of impossible. But we can withdraw, leave 
China to her fate, accept such a share in trade as 
the others will leave to us and confine our atten- 
tion to South America or other quarters of the 
world. Such a policy would undoubtedly be one 
of inglorious safety, for Japan is not likely to 
attack us on account of the immigration ques- 
tion alone. But do the people of the United 
States wish to follow this inglorious policy? 
Are we prepared to give up the position we 
have gained in the Far East? Are we ready 
to abandon China to its fate? It is very doubt- 
ful if a majority of American citizens would 
agree to this proposition, and until they do it is 
idle to waste time in its discussion. As a nation 
we intend to have a Far Eastern policy, and, 
by the very nature of the case, our policy must 
deal with that of Japan. 

Shall we oppose the Japanese policy? Cer- 
tainly the policy of that Power is in many ways 
opposed to ours in China. But to answer fully 
the question, we must ask ourselves another: 
how far do we intend to carry this opposition? 
If Japan refuses to yield to our wishes are we 



THE FAR EAST 205 

prepared to go to war in order to secure their 
recognition? To employ half measures, to 
threaten and oppose and then to yield when 
it comes to the fundamental point would gain 
us no advantage and would prove to the whole 
world our weakness as a world Power. But 
are the American people willing to go to war 
with Japan over the Far East? Only, it would 
appear, if the question was a vital one, and if 
every method of conciliation had been tried and 
failed. And what is the advantage of adopting 
a policy of uncompromising hostility to Japan 
if the American people are to repudiate it in 
the end? That they would back up a firmer 
policy is probable, that they would accept war 
if Japan obstinately opposed us on a vital point 
is reasonably sure, but they will ask for assur- 
ance that everything within reason and honor 
has been done to conciliate a proud and sensi- 
tive nation. 

Then there is another reason which should 
urge Americans to go slow in their hostility to 
Japan. At present Japan is in the position of 
reconsidering her alliances. Her old leagues 
with Russia and England are losing their value 
to her, that with Russia on account of the weak- 
ness of the present Government and its probable 
concentration of attention, in the years imme- 
diately following the war, on internal questions ; 
that with England seems to have outlived its 
usefulness to both Powers, and ominous rents 
are appearing in its fabric. Whither shall Ja- 
pan turn? Why not to Germany? For her such 



206 THE WOKLD PERIL 

an alliance would have many advantages. The 
Far East seems to be a secondary interest for 
Germany, in so far as colonial expansion is con- 
cerned, and she would gladly make concessions 
to Japan in this region in return for her sup- 
port there and elsewhere against Great Britain 
and the United States. In addition she might 
ask for the Philippines — remember the events 
of 1898 — but Japan might be willing to allow 
Germany a foothold there. Her interests are 
predominantly on the mainland in China, and 
the Philippines in German hands might prove 
a useful counter weight, in Japan's eyes, to the 
English colonies in Australia and New Zealand. 
So long as she is left undisturbed in China, it 
is not to Japan's disadvantage that others 
should quarrel in the other parts of the Pacific 
and leave her free to pursue her own plans or 
to mediate between them. 

The Zimmermann note is a sufficient indication 
that this alliance would be welcomed by Ger- 
many. But for further illustration of this note 
and of the policy which underlies it the words 
of Von Eeventlow — written before the outbreak 
of the European war and therefore free from 
any of the prejudices of the present situation — 
would seem worthy of quotation and of careful 
pondering by Americans : " Japan and the Ger- 
man Empire are from their geographical posi- 
tion, from their relations and interests pecu- 
liarly fitted to work together in close alliance. 
Should firm and well regulated connections be 
formed between the two Powers, it would result, 



THE FAE EAST 207 

sooner or later, in a decided relief to Germany 
in the North Sea, and a strengthening of its 
position toward Europe, toward East Asia and, 
last but not least, toward the United States. 
Japan would make yet greater gains in its free- 
dom from the present English patronage, fur- 
ther in its differences with the United States.' ' 
That a victorious Germany would plan such an 
alliance is only too probable, and connects, in 
a way, the work of our soldiers in Europe with 
the defence of our interests in the distant Far 
East. 

Should such an alliance take form the only 
course for the United States would appear to 
be an immediate alliance with the British Em- 
pire — equally threatened in the Far East — and 
an immediate strengthening of our Pacific fleet 
to such a force as would enable it to cope 
easily with the Japanese navy unaided. Bare 
considerations of safety would demand such a 
course. But it is not at all sure that Japan, 
despite certain obvious advantages, would wish 
to pursue such a policy. It would involve a 
complete change in her system of foreign pol- 
icy, and, unless the advantages are certain, such 
a complete diplomatic change of front is seldom 
wise. Moreover it is not at all sure that the 
present disinterestedness of Germany in the Far 
East will continue. He who sups with the Devil 
must use a long spoon, and it is doubtful if 
Japan would gain by the supplanting of two 
moderate Powers such as Great Britain and 
the United States by a Power like Germany in 



208 THE WORLD PERIL 

whom the appetite for imperialism is still un- 
whetted. And especially is it unlikely if the 
United States can find a course on which it 
can agree with Japan and conciliate their some- 
what contending interests. Can such an agree- 
ment be found? 

The sources of difference with Japan seem to 
be two, one the question of immigration, the 
other the question of the Far East. With re- 
gard to the first difference the difficulty of ad- 
justment does not seem to be insuperable. In the 
first place it would appear, if the "Memoirs" 
of Hyashi are to be trusted, that the question 
of Japanese immigration constituted for Japan 
merely a pawn which she could use in her dif- 
ferences with the United States in the Far East. 
But it seems to have been magnified by the 
methods taken in this country to restrict such 
immigration, or to prevent those already here 
from gaining any foothold in the country. If 
you have a difference with a nation, said a sage 
diplomat, you should be careful to be scrupu- 
lously courteous in small things. This advice 
we appear to have neglected. Some of our State 
legislation cannot but have been insulting to a 
nation as proud and sensitive as are the Japan- 
ese. And even if, to official Japan, this question 
is not of vital importance compared with others, 
with popular Japan — and popular Japan is not 
without power — this question is a real stumbling 
block to reconciliation. Let us hope that our 
western legislatures will take all due care in 
handling this difference, especially while Japan 



THE FAE EAST 209 

is loyally observing her gentleman's agreement 
to restrain immigration. And at present this 
seems to be the case. Furthermore, in future 
discussion of the question, for it is sure to come 
up again sooner or later, let us endeavor, so far 
as possible, to avoid anything wounding to 
Japan's pride. That Americans and Japanese 
do not get along well together on the Pacific 
coast does not mean that they are in any way 
inferior to us, but merely that they are differ- 
ent. Moreover the problem seems, at bottom, 
mainly an economic one which time may settle. 
But at the present moment, when Japan needs 
her sons elsewhere and is willing to discourage 
immigration, it will do us no good to raise the 
question unnecessarily. Let sleeping dogs lie. 

The second difference demands more imme- 
diate attention and is, in itself, probably more 
difficult in solution. Is there any way in which 
the interests of Japan and the United States 
may be reconciled in the Far East? Perhaps 
a possible solution might lie along this line : The 
expansionist movement in Japan follows two 
directions, one to Corea, Manchuria and inner 
Mongolia, the other toward China proper. With 
the first we have much less objection than to 
the second. Japan has a real economic need 
for Corea and Manchuria, they furnish a large 
amount of her foodstuffs and in return take a 
goodly share of Japan's manufactures. For 
their possession Japan has fought two wars and 
spent countless blood and treasure. Moreover 
Manchuria is only in the widest sense of the 



210 THE WORLD PERIL 

term part of China, an outlying district, almost 
a protectorate, not an integral part of the Re- 
public, nor has Japan ever refused to recognize 
Chinese sovereignty there. Corea was once an 
independent kingdom and is now an integral 
part of the Japanese Empire. However much 
we may dislike the methods by which it was 
annexed it is doubtful if anything can be done 
now to change its status short of war with 
Japan. England and Russia, our potential 
allies in our Far Eastern policy, have bowed 
to accomplished facts and recognized Japan's 
predominant interest in Manchuria and her an- 
nexation of Corea. Our course has been a 
rather ambiguous one, marked by the ill fated 
attempt of Secretary Knox to neutralize the 
Manchurian railways in 1910. 

If we should recognize Japan's position in 
Corea and Manchuria, agree to put no obstacles 
in her path there, what would we lose ? We still 
possess some trade in these regions, part — 
which would probably remain — in goods in 
which Japanese competition is either non- 
existent or weak ; the remaining interests might 
be granted a term of years to move elsewhere. 
Then we would, in a way, have compromised 
our position toward the Open Door and toward 
the integrity of China. But is it wise to try to 
remedy our mistakes of yesterday by vigorous 
and continued protests against actions commit- 
ted long since? Nor is the real integrity of 
China threatened. If the Chinese Republic be- 
comes, as we hope, a strong Power, Japan can 



THE FAR EAST 211 

no more hold Manchuria against her than Eng- 
land could hold Belgium against the German 
Empire, if Belgium wished to join Germany. 
Japan 's only salvation in that day will be her 
friendship for England, Eussia and the United 
States and the support of the people of Man- 
churia, won by years of good government. And 
if she follows this policy we ought to be content. 
And what can we gain in return for these con- 
cessions? We can ask of Japan to join with 
England, Eussia and ourselves in maintaining 
the integrity of China and equal trade oppor- 
tunity for all. We might ask them to join with 
us to form at least the nucleus of an interna- 
tional organization to supervise the economic 
development of China. Such a union of effort 
would preserve the fundamental principles in 
the policy of both Japan and the United States. 
For Japan it would mean undisturbed oppor- 
tunity to develop Manchuria and Corea, and 
the opportunity to win, in China, all the trade 
that fair competitive measures would allow. It 
might mean a defeat for the more imperialistic 
sections of the Japanese people, but it is doubt- 
ful if their policy, carrying with it the aliena- 
tion of Eussia, England, the United States and 
China, is, in the long run, the wise one for the 
Japanese Empire. For us it would mean the 
preservation of the integrity of China proper 
and of the ' ' Open Door. ' ' Indirectly we would 
gain by the development of Corea and Man- 
churia, for Japan has a large trade with us and 
we could gain by her prosperity. 



212 THE WORLD PERIL 

Such in its general outline is a possible plan 
by which Japan and the United States may be 
reconciled. It is only put forward as a possible 
plan and without any attempt to give more 
than the most general outline, for to do other- 
wise, in this changing world situation, would 
be not only useless but probably unwise. But 
may not the hope be expressed that, in some 
way or other, this favorable opportunity can be 
grasped and the present alliance between Japan 
and the United States against the German dan- 
ger be extended into an agreement to the ad- 
vantage of eastern Asia and to the United States 
and Japan themselves? 

It may seem a far field from the present world 
danger of German arms to the Far East with 
its seemingly separate problems, its peculiar 
animosities and alliances. And yet, in an in- 
direct way, it would seem that this situation is 
a result of the German attempt at world rule. 
The German danger has withdrawn first Rus- 
sia, then England and lastly the United States 
from the Far East and forced them to concen- 
trate their attention in Europe. And Japan has 
been left predominant and unchecked in eastern 
Asia. The German peril is as great in these dis- 
placements it effects in the world situation as 
in its more direct results in Europe and the Near 
East. And these effects, with their vital im- 
portance to us, deserve the serious consideration 
of all American citizens. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE WORLD PERIL AND WORLD PEACE 

The War For International Freedom 

Philip Marshall Brown 

introduction 

The United States from August, 1914, till 
April, 1917, experimented with every possible 
brand of neutrality to find itself in the end re- 
luctantly, though inexorably, drawn into the 
great conflict. First we tried the anaemic 
variety of neutrality, the paralysis of moral 
and intellectual powers. Then we more or less 
unconsciously assumed the impossible role of 
the benevolent neutral, hoping for the success 
of the Entente Allies. And finally we resorted 
to the dubious expedient of armed, malevolent 
neutrality. 

We were afforded all possible opportunities 
and leisure to study the whole situation in or- 
der to ascertain our precise obligations toward 
the struggle. We did not enter the war blindly 
under any illusions. We have voted vast cred- 
its. We have our naval and military forces 
actually in Europe. Breaking with all our tra- 
ditions and prejudices, we have resorted to con- 
scription to raise an enormous army to send 

213 



214 THE WORLD PERIL 

across the seas. We believe ourselves prepared 
to make the frightful sacrifices demanded as 
the price of victory. 

In spite of all this, the American people, with 
no implied disloyalty but with a spirit of honest 
inquiry, are asking the reason for all this sacri- 
fice. They are insistently demanding that we 
should define clearly the final goal, the exact 
aims of the war. On every side is heard the 
question: "What are we fighting for?" 

President Wilson as the official spokesman 
and the rightful leader of the nation in foreign 
affairs has repeatedly tried to state the aims 
of the United States in entering the war. In 
his memorable message to Congress on April 2 
he said: 

"The present German warfare against com- 
merce is a warfare against mankind. It is a 
war against all nations. . . . The challenge is 
to all mankind. . . . 

"Our motive will not be revenge or the vic- 
torious assertion of the physical might of the 
nation, but only the vindication of right, of 
human right, of which we are only a single 
champion. 

i ' Our object ... is to vindicate the principles 
of peace and justice in the life of the world 
against selfish and autocratic power and to set 
up amongst the really free and self-governed 
peoples of the world such a concert of purpose 
and of action as will henceforth insure the ob- 
servance of those principles. 



WORLD PEACE 215 

"Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable 
where the peace of the world is involved and 
the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to 
that peace and freedom lies in the existence of 
autocratic governments backed by organized 
force which is controlled wholly by their will, 
not by the will of their people. We have seen 
the last of neutrality in such circumstances. 

"We are glad, now that we see the facts with 
no veil of false pretence about them, to fight 
thus for the ultimate peace of the world and 
for the liberation of its peoples, the German 
people included : for the rights of nations great 
and small and the privilege of men everywhere 
to choose their way of life and of obedience. 
The world must be made safe for democracy. 
Its peace must be planted upon the trusted 
foundations of political liberty. 

"It will be all the easier for us to conduct 
ourselves as belligerents in a high spirit of 
right and fairness because we act without ani- 
mus, not in enmity toward a people or with 
the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage 
upon them, but only in armed opposition to an 
irresponsible government which has thrown 
aside all considerations of humanity and of 
right and is running amuck. ' ' 

No argument is needed to demonstrate that 
we are grappling with an international outlaw 
who "is running amuck." President Wilson 
spoke for the whole country when, in reply to 
the insolent command of Germany to remain 



216 THE WOKLD PEEIL 

cravenly at home, he answered : ' l There is one 
choice we cannot make, we are incapable of 
making : we will not choose the path of submis- 
sion and suffer the most sacred rights of our 
nation and our people to be ignored or violated. 
The wrongs against which we now array our- 
selves are not common wrongs ; they reach out 
to the very roots of human life." (Message of 
April 2.) 

There can be no equivocation, no uncertainty, 
no doubt concerning this immediate reason for 
entering the war, nor any failure to concentrate 
every energy on its successful prosecution. The 
world must be rid of this assassin of the sea, 
this red handed apostle of SchrecMichkeit, this 
international outlaw, this government that 
" knows no law" except the law of its own brutal 
necessity. There can be no argument on this 
point. We know full well what we are fighting 
against! But are we clear what we are fighting 
for? This is the legitimate question. After the 
outlaw is defeated, after he is rendered harm- 
less, what then? What are the larger aims of 
this war? Are we fighting for the restoration 
of Alsace-Lorraine to France, for the freedom 
of Poland and Bohemia, or are we fighting for 
something that is equally vital to ourselves as 
well as to Europe? 

To this demand for a definition of the objects 
of this war President Wilson has replied : ' ' The 
world must be made safe for democracy. ' ' This 
conception of our role as a responsible member 
of the great family of nations is lofty and vast. 



WORLD PEACE 217 

One may recognize its profound truth but feel 
incapable of denning with any precision its 
practical application. We are bound therefore 
to make certain that this battle cry, this inspir- 
ing announcement of our great purpose in enter- 
ing the war should not remain a vain and 
magniloquent phrase. To be of value it must 
mean something simple and vital for every 
American. We must reduce it to intelligible 
and practical terms. This may be best done, it 
seems to me, first by denning our goal, and sec- 
ondly by defining the methods by which we may 
attain it. 

What then do we mean by this fight "to make 
the world safe for democracy"? What is the 
vital significance of this struggle for interna- 
tional freedom? First of all we need to recall 
certain larger aspects of the eternal fight for 
freedom for which mankind has shed rivers of 
blood. 

There is an inspiring significance in the fact 
that on the walls of Washington's old home at 
Mount Vernon hangs the rusty key of the Bas- 
tile, that bloody citadel of "the divine rights of 
kings to rule badly." It was splendidly fit- 
ting that Lafayette should have brought this 
eloquent trophy of the battle for freedom in 
France to his old comrade in the battle for 
freedom in America. 

We must remind ourselves that Washington 
and Lafayette did not fight merely against a 
crazy king or on account of an ancient enmity 
between France and England. Their fight was 



218 THE WOELD PERIL 

essentially a fight in behalf of the rights of 
democracy in England and France, as well as 
in America. Trevelyan, the British historian, 
reminds us that many of his countrymen "could 
not forget that their opponents were English- 
men, with a deeper grievance even than their 
own against the same set of perverse and un- 
wise rulers, speaking the very same mother 
tongue, professing the same religion and own- 
ing the same great history and the same glorious 
literature as themselves. The Americans justi- 
fied their political action by precedents derived 
from the Long Parliament and the Revolution 
of 1688." ("George the Third and Charles 
Fox," Vol. II, p. 199.) 

Louis XVI, in aiding the American Revolu- 
tion against the hereditary enemy of France, 
was permitted by the irony of fate to make his 
own contribution to the cause of freedom which 
later was- to involve his own throne and life. 
The French Revolution, like the American Revo- 
lution, was not merely an uprising against a 
"perverse" and "unwise" ruler. With all its 
demoralization and excesses, as with its modern 
counterpart in Russia, it was the expression of 
a universal force, the dynamic, explosive, de- 
structive and constructive power of democracy 
throughout the world. It bore terrible testi- 
mony to the truth that it is never safe to oppose 
the divine right of democracy to rule, whether 
wisely or badly. 

Another epochal event in the great struggle 
for freedom was the promulgation of the Mon- 



WORLD PEACE 219 

roe Doctrine to the effect that Europe should 
never be permitted to interfere with the devel- 
opment of the free democratic nations of this 
western hemisphere. It was a bold direct 
answer to the threat of the Holy Alliance to 
fight democracy wherever it might show its 
head. It is of striking and peculiar interest 
at this time to recall the avowed purpose of 
the Alliance as revealed in the first article of 
the secret Treaty of Verona signed November 
22, 1822: 

"The high contracting Powers being con- 
vinced that the system of representative gov- 
ernment is equally as incompatible with the 
monarchical principles as the maxim of the sov- 
ereignty of the people with the divine right, 
engage mutually, in the most solemn manner, 
to use all their efforts to put an end to the sys- 
tem of representative governments, in whatever 
country it may exist in Europe, and to prevent 
its being introduced in those countries where 
it is not yet known.' ' 

It is difficult fully to appreciate the magnifi- 
cent service rendered to the cause of freedom 
by the maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine. 
We should remind ourselves that the nations 
of this hemisphere were left free to determine 
their own destinies, and that they have been 
spared the unhappy struggles and the criminal 
operations of the policy of balance of power 
which has wrought such disaster in Europe. 
This is why President Wilson has proposed 
"that the nations should with one accord adopt 



220 THE WOELD PERIL 

the doctrine of President Monroe as the doc- 
trine of the world: that no nation should seek 
to extend its policy over any other nation or 
people, but that every people should be left 
free to determine its own policy, its own way 
of development, unhindered, unthreatened, un- 
afraid, the little along with the great and the 
powerful." (Message, January 22, 1917.) 

This is the answer of America to the unholy 
alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and 
Turkey, whose purpose to crush the rights of 
other nations and control their destinies has 
been clearly revealed. 

It is well to recall the great revolutionary 
struggle in behalf of democracy that swept 
Europe in 1848. We must not forget how Hun- 
gary, with the enthusiastic sympathy of the 
American people, fought in vain for liberty; 
how she was finally crushed by the combined 
forces of Austria and Eussia, and how today, 
alas, this very Hungary tyrannizes over her 
own subject nationalities, the Croats and the 
Eumanians. We should recall the disdain with 
which Frederick William IV of Prussia declined 
a crown at the hands of the people in 1849. We 
should not forget how popular demands for the 
right of democracy to rule were cynically met 
by the Prussian Constitution of 1850 which 
still constitutes today the bulwark of the 
Hohenzollerns. While other countries in Europe 
were steadily winning their constitutional free- 
dom, Germany and Austria, with their present 
ally Turkey, were able to stand firm in the de- 



WORLD PEACE 221 

fence of autocracy and reaction. The war of 
1870, though it brought humiliation and disaster 
to France, also brought about the firm estab- 
lishment of the Eepublic which Bismarck had 
cynically encouraged because he believed it 
would mean a weaker neighbor. Germany, on 
the other hand, because of its material triumphs 
became more submissive than before to the ar- 
rogant domination of Prussian militarism. 

The failure of the fight for freedom in Ger- 
many needs no demonstration. The present 
archaic, feudalistic government stands out as 
an ugly crude fact. The system which permits 
Prussia to dominate Germany, which permits 
a militaristic minority to control Prussia, which 
leaves to the King-Emperor the right to veto 
any initiative even in respect to changes in the 
constitution has been amply condemned by 
Germans themselves. Rohrbach, in "German 
World Policies,' ' which the translator, Von 
Mach, asserts to have "probably inspired more- 
Germans than any other book published since 
1871," alluding to the recommendation of a 
Chinese commission that China should adopt 
the Prussian form of government, remarks : 

"Theoretically many things may be said in 
favor of such a system for a community like 
China; actually, however, a reform which was 
intended to advance freedom could not have 
been proclaimed more inauspiciously even in 
China than by basing it on a system which 
everywhere else in the world was regarded as 
reactionary. . . . 



222 THE WOKLD PERIL 

"If the leading classes in Germany show that 
they wish to continue conditions which are not 
conservative in a moderate sense of the word, 
but reactionary and politically immoral, it is 
they and not the press of the opposition which 
are responsible for the damaged reputation and 
influence of our national idea abroad, (p. 218) 

"Since even Bismarck in his masterful way 
adopted at home the principle of freedom for 
the sake of the respect which it would win for 
the Empire abroad, we might well learn how 
wise and useful it would be if we permitted a 
new spirit to transform our national life today 
in a way which would strengthen us at home 
and be unfailingly effective abroad." (p. 219) 

The movement now going on in Germany in 
behalf of political reform, if favored at all by 
the Government, would undoubtedly be favored 
principally for the cynical purpose of "the re- 
spect which it would win for the Empire 
abroad"! We must be on our guard against 
a revolution made to order in Germany! 

There are those who argue that it is nobody's 
concern what kind of government the Germans 
may live under, if they are contented. This 
would be true in the main were it not for the 
unhappy fact that the autocratic rule of the 
Hohenzollerns enables Prussian militarism to 
threaten the freedom of other peoples than the 
Germans themselves. As long as this system 
prevails, the peace and happiness of Europe, 
and — as we now see — the peace and happiness 
of the whole world are constantly in danger. 



WORLD PEACE 223 

The proofs of this fact are to be found, first 
of all, in the public utterances of the Kaiser 
and of the leading representative men of Ger- 
many. The sacred mission of German Kultur 
to civilize and dominate the rest of the world 
has been repeatedly proclaimed in no uncertain 
terms, Rohrbach has fervently expressed this 
creed as follows: 

"We start very consciously with the convic- 
tion that we have been placed in the arena of 
the world in order to work out moral perfection, 
not only for ourselves, but for all mankind. 
("German World Policies," p. 4.) 

"... Rome had to be the mistress of the 
world before she could determine the political 
and legal thoughts of future generations. 

"It is not necessary to claim for the German 
idea that it will exist like the Roman either as 
the mistress of the world or not at all, but it 
is right to say that it will exist only as the co- 
mistress of the culture of the world, or it will 
not exist at all. (p. 5) 

"... Germany's fate is England. . . . The 
man who has studied the progress of the world 
during the last hundred years, and who knows 
something of the world today from his own ob- 
servation, knows that there is only one impor- 
tant national-political question: 'Is the Anglo- 
Saxon type destined to gain the sole dominion 
in those parts of the world where things are 
still in the process of development, or will there 
be sufficient scope also for the German idea to 
take part in the shaping of the culture of the 
world on both sides of the ocean!' " (p. 8) 



224 THE WORLD PERIL 

The naive significance of this argument is 
surely extraordinary. No word whatever con- 
cerning the role of Slavic, Latin, Dutch and 
other national " cultures' ' in the development 
of civilization! Not at all! We have here the 
proposition and the challenge that England and 
the United States must share with Germany 
the domination of the world! This western 
hemisphere " where things are still in the pro- 
cess of development' ' must be opened up to 
German Kultur! The Monroe Doctrine, in 
other words, must definitely be abandoned! 

These ideas are not the ideas of irresponsible, 
isolated individuals. They are the ideas of the 
statesmen, publicists, teachers and leaders of 
opinion in Germany. They are merely the echo 
of the extraordinary utterances of the Kaiser 
whose fundamental creed is that he is responsi- 
ble only to God. He is credibly reported to 
have said: 

"It is to the empire of the world that the 
German genius aspires. 

"God has called us to civilize the world: we 
are the missionaries of human progress. 

"The German people will be the block of 
granite on which our Lord will be able to ele- 
vate and achieve the civilization of the world. ' ' 
(Quoted by Gibbons in "The New Map of 
Europe," p. 31.) 

But the proofs of the German menace to the 
world rest not merely on bombastic words, on 
chauvinistic schemes. The diplomacy of Ger- 
many for the last seventeen years has repeat- 



WORLD PEACE 225 

edly revealed the crude reality of her ambitions. 
It is sufficient to recall the famous telegram of 
encouragement from the Kaiser to President 
Kruger, the blusterings of Germany at Tangiers 
in 1905, again at Agadir in 1911, the loud rat- 
tling of the sabre during the Bosnia-Herzego- 
vina crisis of 1908-1909 that ended in the 
humiliation of both Russia and Serbia, the ar- 
dent support of Austria against Serbia in 1914 
and the insolent ultimatum to Russia which 
provoked war when Austria had already agreed 
to a peaceful discussion of the whole Serbian 
question. 

The foreign policy of Germany during this 
period was marked by two characteristics: the 
attempt to achieve her ends by a parade of 
force; and to embarrass her rivals by sowing 
dissensions or encouraging disaffection. Mili- 
tarism could well afford to be content for a 
while, if it could achieve its ends without actual 
war. This was an indirect Prussian method 
of controlling the destinies of other nations. 

Fishing in troubled waters which they them- 
selves have helped to trouble is an art long 
cultivated by Prussian diplomacy. The Irish 
disaffection was welcomed and abetted with 
great joy. A demoralized autocratic Russia in 
the hands of a disreputable German clique was 
far more to be desired than a free democratic 
state affording the Russians the chance to de- 
velop a strong spirit of nationalism. "We in 
America would do well to remember the em- 
barrassment caused Admiral Dewey by the 



226 THE WORLD PERIL 

menacing presence of a German fleet in Manila 
Bay in 1898. We should never forget German 
intrigues against the very sovereignty of the 
United States within onr borders, and in par- 
ticular the sardonic attempt to embroil Mexico 
and Japan against us. German ambitions and 
machinations, as this war is rapidly unfolding, 
have known no limit. The history of their dev- 
ilish plots is long and hideous. There can be 
no reasonable doubt of their insensate ambition 
to dominate the world. 

In sum, it was not the international bad man- 
ners — the SchneidigJceit — of Germany which 
isolated her and drew her neighbors into a de- 
fensive entente. It was the "shining armor" 
that rendered friendly relations impossible. It 
was the furor Teutonicus, the revealed purpose 
to impose German Kultur on the rest of the 
world, that warned Europe to prepare for the 
war long determined in principle in Berlin and 
Vienna. It was not the assassination of the 
Archduke that caused the Great War. We now 
know through the revelations of Giolitti to the 
Italian Chamber of Deputies that the war was 
planned for 1913. 

In view of all these well established facts, it 
cannot be the undertaking of the Entente Allies 
merely to frustrate these Prussian ambitions. 
Neither is it the object of the United States 
to fight merely to avenge certain injured rights. 
It is possible that a "peace without victory" 
resulting in an effort to restore as far as pos- 
sible the status quo ante would serve our im- 



WORLD PEACE 227 

mediate ends. It would not, however, make the 
world safe for democracy. The sacrifices of 
the gigantic struggle for freedom would have 
been largely in vain. The right of free peoples 
to determine their own destinies without dicta- 
tion from without can only be achieved by the 
triumph of democracy within Germany itself. 
The world cannot be free, there can be no true 
system of international law, so long as Germans 
remain enslaved and permit themselves to be 
the powerful agents of Prussian despotism. 
There can be no real international freedom 
where so powerful a nation places itself above 
restraint, whether from within or without. 

Since the moment Germany pleaded its own 
military necessity as the excuse for the viola- 
tion of Belgium, she has constituted herself a 
self-confessed outlaw. We were slow to realize 
our duty against this hostis humani generis. 
We long tolerated inhuman violations of our 
rights on the high seas, and even endured 
ugly intrigues and crimes in our very midst. 
The truth was hard to believe. Such villainous 
acts and projects were entirely foreign to our 
way of thinking, to our understanding of the 
obligations of one state toward another. But 
at last we saw the German menace in all its 
terror. We saw not merely our own interests 
imperilled: we saw the enemy of freedom 
reaching out to throttle the world. We shook 
ourselves from our drugged state of callous in- 
difference and crude provincialism. We saw 
the splendid vision of our duty as a member 



228 THE WORLD PERIL 

of the great family of nations. We came to 
realize that international peace and order were 
at the mercy of the greatest outlaw the world 
has ever seen. Though tragically late, we are 
now trying to do our duty as good international 
citizens. We are ready to pay a fearful price 
for the preservation of freedom, the freedom 
of nations to determine their own destinies, the 
supreme stage in the ancient struggle, the most 
heroic, the most horrible of all the conflicts for 
the sacred cause. 

It ought to be sufficient, perhaps, merely to 
realize the simple fact that we are fighting 
against an outlaw. The immediate task is ob- 
viously stupendous. It demands all our powers, 
all our loyal devotion. We cannot prudently 
ignore, however, the question which is heard 
on all sides : "How can the world be made safe 
for democracy ?" What are the guarantees of 
freedom? This is not mere speculation: it is 
a very practical problem. It is our solemn duty 
to make certain that all this horror and heroism 
shall not have been in vain. 



I 

First of all, it should be obvious that the out- 
law must be defeated. He must not merely be 
checked: he must be overwhelmingly beaten. 
The immediate problem is purely of a military 
character. What shall be done with the outlaw 
after he is beaten or captured is of second- 
ary importance. We have been all-too-slow to 



WORLD PEACE 229 

realize the immense menace from Germany on 
land and sea. While we have leisurely made 
plans and indulged in futile discussions, the 
Entente Allies have suffered terrific losses that 
have greatly weakened their powers of resist- 
ance. Our help may arrive too late. The ques- 
tionings, the obstacles placed by pacifists and 
others have had a criminal result in withholding 
urgently needed aid from those engaged in a 
life and death struggle with a marvellously pre- 
pared and extremely powerful outlaw. The 
fight for freedom cannot be won by words or by 
academic discussions concerning terms of peace. 
It is essentially a military problem. 

II 

We must next remember that we are wres- 
tling, not with flesh and blood, with guns, Zep- 
pelins and submarines, but with a false ideal. 
We are wrestling with a grossly materialistic 
conception of human relations; with a pagan 
idea of legal rights and obligations that recog- 
nizes no other necessities than those of Ger- 
many. We are fighting against a feudalistic 
theory of the state that threatens the freedom 
of all other peoples. We are battling to arouse 
the German people from their degradation as 
Prussian vassals. We are fighting their own 
battle for freedom as did the men of '76 in 
their fight for British freedom. As President 
Wilson has said: ". . .we act without animus, 
not in enmity toward a people or with the desire 
to bring any injury or disadvantage upon them, 



230 THE WORLD PERIL 

but only in armed opposition to an irresponsible 
government." (Message, April 2, 1917.) 

All that is admirable, inspiring and endeared 
to the rest of the world in Teutonic civilization 
is in no way threatened. On the contrary, we 
are fighting for the best traditions of Germany 
against the Prussian foe that has dragged them 
in the mire. We are fighting to restore to Ger- 
many the bulwark of democracy — the town 
meeting, which originally came out of her free 
forests centuries ago. 

This is a holy cause for which German- Amer- 
icans and all true friends of Germany may loy- 
ally, though with natural feelings of sadness, 
shed their blood. The battles of the North and 
the South over the freedom of the slaves ar- 
rayed brothers against each other. Defeated 
and victorious alike can now truthfully say that 
the end attained was worth the sacrifice. May 
we not hope that the influence and aid of Ger- 
man-Americans in this supreme struggle for 
freedom will prove of inestimable value in 
arousing all Germans to the sense of the need 
of overthrowing Prussian despotism? 

This truth must be constantly emphasized: 
that the world will not be made safe for democ- 
racy merely by the defeat of the outlaw. Inter- 
national law and order may not be preserved in 
any other way than by his complete subjection. 
This can only be accomplished by a sweeping 
political revolution in Germany which shall 
have for its fundamental principle the right of 
free peoples to govern themselves. 



WORLD PEACE 231 

III 

With the outlaw banished and Prussian abso- 
lutism overthrown there still remains the prob- 
lem of protecting international society from 
future violence. The spirit animating the sol- 
diers of all the contending armies should be: 
" Never again !" The horrors of this war have 
made men solemnly resolve to take whatever 
steps may be necessary to render other great 
wars impossible. This has well been termed 
' ' a war against war. ' ' 

The difficulties in the way of world organiza- 
tion for the preservation of order are obviously 
immense and, possibly, insuperable, at this stage 
of civilization. First of all, as we have seen, 
Germany must be defeated, and a revolution in 
German thought must be brought about. Be- 
fore nations can unite in any common under- 
taking, they must learn to think fundamentally 
alike. They must share similar conceptions of 
right and wrong, of justice and injustice. They 
must agree on basic rights. They must agree 
on the laws that shall protect such rights. They 
must agree on the proper agency for the inter- 
pretation of these laws. They must agree on 
the nature of the penalties for their infraction. 
They must agree on the nature and the powers 
of the executive charged with the maintenance 
of international rights and order, as well as for 
the punishment of wrongdoers. 

To state these difficulties should serve to re- 
mind us that the evolution of society does not 
permit great sweeping reforms in a day. Im- 



232 THE WORLD PERIL 

mense patience as well as wisdom is demanded. 
We are bound to acknowledge the existence of 
vital differences among nations concerning 
fundamental conceptions of rights and obliga- 
tions. We are compelled to confess that inter- 
national law has hardly begun to define national 
interests and rights with any precision or 
authority. In some instances — Poland, Serbia, 
Bohemia, for example — the basic right of exist- 
ence, even, has not yet been determined. 

We must admit that a court presupposes law : 
that the proper function of a court is to inter- 
pret, not to legislate. We must recognize that 
it is inherently unjust and abhorrent to attempt 
to coerce before you have denned one's rights, 
and have prescribed the proper way of protect- 
ing rights. Moreover, the freedom of independ- 
ent democracies throughout the world demands 
that they shall participate voluntarily in the 
formulation and in the protection of interna- 
tional rights. The spectre of absolute sover- 
eignty in any form, whether within the state 
or between states, must be forever banished. 
There must be no attempt, whether by councils, 
leagues, international police or any other in- 
strumentalities, to coerce free democracies 
through any " Great Leviathan." We should 
keep ever in mind the vast distinction between 
the town meeting and the international com- 
munity: between municipal law and interna- 
tional law. Kant was right when he observed 
in his essay on " Perpetual Peace' ' that: "This 
juristic state must arise from some sort of com- 



WORLD PEACE 233 

pact. This compact must not be based, how- 
ever, on compulsory laws like that lying at the 
basis of the state : it must rather be that of a 
permanent free association. ' ' 

Bearing in mind these great obstacles in the 
way of world organization, we cannot fail to 
recognize that the problem is deserving of the 
most earnest consideration. President Wilson 
has repeatedly spoken of a "league for peace,' ' 
of "a covenant of cooperative peace," of "a 
concert of free peoples," of "a partnership of 
democratic nations," of "a league of honor," 
of "a partnership of opinion," phrases which 
suggest something of the vagueness, the intri- 
cate nature of the proposition. 

This proposition of international cooperation 
for the preservation of world peace has taken 
practical form in the definite recommendations 
of "The League to Enforce Peace" organized 
under the presidency of ex-President Taft, and 
guardedly approved in principle by* some of the 
leading statesmen of England, France, Ger- 
many and other countries, as well as by Presi- 
dent Wilson himself. 

These recommendations, in brief, are as fol- 
lows: (1) All justiciable questions not settled 
by negotiation shall be submitted to a judicial 
tribunal for hearing and judgment. (2) Non- 
justiciable questions "shall be submitted to a 
council of conciliation for hearing, considera- 
tion and recommendation." (3) Economic and 
military pressure shall be employed against any 
member of the League "that goes to war, or 



234 THE WORLD PERIL 

commits acts of hostility, against another of 
the signatories before any question arising shall 
be submitted as provided in the foregoing. " 
(4) Conferences shall be held from time to time 
"to formulate and codify rules of international 
law, which . . . shall thereafter govern in the 
decisions of the judicial tribunal. ,, 

Of these recommendations the last, which 
constitutes a recognition of the lack of inter- 
national legislation to formulate the rights of 
nations, I believe to be far the most important. 
It is a confession that the whole structure of 
international organization cannot be erected 
until the solid foundations have been laid. 

Another significant feature of this proposed 
league is its frank recognition of the fact stated 
by President Wilson that: "Neutrality is no 
longer feasible or desirable where the peace of 
the world is involved and the freedom of its 
peoples. . . ." (Message of April 2.) Further- 
more, this league is a candid recognition of the 
necessity of force for the preservation of inter- 
national rights. It affords a common platform 
for extreme militarists and pacifists. The name 
of the league permits the militarist to stress 
the word "enforce," the pacifist the word 
"peace," while it also allows others to stress 
the word "league." 

Serious objections may be made against these 
proposals as involving perilous liabilities for 
the United States and an abandonment of the 
Monroe Doctrine. It is not to be expected that 
these recommendations will be adopted in toto 



WOELD PEACE 235 

by the great nations. They afford, however, an 
excellent basis for discussion, a point de depart, 
when the question of future guarantees for 
world peace shall be formally taken up. 

Whether or no the nations are ready as yet 
to enter into any formal "league," any " part- 
nership' ' or "covenant of cooperative peace,' ' 
immense encouragement is to be found in the 
fact that the present combination of fifteen na- 
tions against the Teutonic bloc is virtually a 
league of peace. Its object is the preservation 
of international order. This union of interna- 
tional good citizens against an outlaw is a most 
hopeful sign that the majority of the nations 
are in substantial agreement concerning the 
rights of free democratic peoples. It is an en- 
couraging indication that with the overthrow 
of Prussian absolutism it would not be impos- 
sible to secure a consensus of international opin- 
ion regarding the fundamental rights and 
obligations of nations. If this fiery furnace of 
affliction should fuse the warring nations into 
a real "partnership of opinion,' ' into one demo- 
cratic union of sympathies and ideals, it should 
augur well for the future peace of the world. 
When men understand each other there may be 
little need of coercion or of the formal organiza- 
tion of councils, or leagues to enforce peace. 



IV 

The insistent demand that the respective bel- 
ligerents should state their definite terms of 



236 THE WORLD PERIL 

peace is hardly reasonable. It would seem very 
much like cynical indifference to ask either the 
outlaw or his victims to define clearly what they 
are fighting for. Moreover, in any war whose 
fortunes may fluctuate from day to day, where 
deeds are done that cannot be made right, where 
situations are created that render a return to 
the status quo ante impossible, neither of the 
contending parties can afford to lay all its 
cards on the table. There must always be some- 
thing in reserve with which to bargain, espe- 
cially in the interests of the weaker party. 
Unless the belligerents have both become sin- 
cere converts to the ideal, the principle of uti 
possidetis cannot be eliminated from peace dis- 
cussions. To be definite, the question of the 
disposition of Germany's conquered colonies 
depends very largely on the question of the dis- 
position of the territories conquered by Ger- 
many in Europe. The creation of a Teutonic 
Mitteleuropa during this war is a new and por- 
tentous fact that must necessarily render dim- 
cult the statement of war aims by either of the 
belligerents during the actual conduct of the 
war. 

All that may fairly be demanded is that the 
belligerents should formulate their general 
aims. This has been done with considerable 
precision by the Entente Allies and the United 
States. They have demanded " restitution,' ' 
"reparation" and "guarantees." They have 
insisted that the outlaw should restore his plun- 
der, should make all-too4nadequate amends to 



WORLD PEACE 237 

his victims, and should be rendered impotent 
to break again the peace of the world. 

The German Government, on the other hand, 
has spoken of a " German' ' peace. It has failed 
to subscribe whole-heartedly to the Russian 
formula, which has been mildly accepted by the 
feeble Reichstag, to the effect that there shall 
be no " annexations by conquest" or indem- 
nities. The Kaiser and his Prussian autocrats, 
the Austrian Emperor, the Government of Hun- 
gary, the Sultan of Turkey, — none of them could 
honestly subscribe to the condition emphasized 
by President Wilson "that governments derive 
all their just powers from the consent of the 
governed, and that no right anywhere exists to 
hand people about from sovereignty to sov- 
ereignty as if they were property." To sub- 
scribe to that principle would mean the end of 
their power, their complete downfall. In some 
instances it would mean the dissolution of their 
nations, notably, Austria and Hungary. There 
can be no reconciliation of the war aims of the 
opposing parties in this struggle. The failure 
to perceive this fundamental fact is a failure 
to see the difference between right and wrong, 
between virtue and crime, between freedom and 
slavery. There can be no honorable surrender 
by the friends of international freedom. It is 
an insult to ask them repeatedly what they are 
fighting for. 

But when it concerns a question of frontiers, 
of the disposition of the fates of whole peoples, 
though the United States may very properly 



238 THE WORLD PERIL 

decline to assume direct responsibility for all 
future adjustments of this character, we are 
bound to insist on the application of certain 
sound principles. In our fight for the over- 
throw of an outlaw and for the safety of de- 
mocracy throughout the world, we are bound to 
make certain that no more such criminal denials 
of the rights of free peoples shall be permitted 
as in the Congress of Berlin. Our concern is 
primarily not about European problems but 
about problems which involve the peace and 
good order of the whole world. We must there- 
fore demand that this war should result in a 
just recognition of all rights in accordance with 
just principles. The archaic principle of the 
balance of power which heretofore has brought 
such misery and cruel wrongs to Europe must 
be forever repudiated. The United States has 
not come into this struggle to redress the Euro- 
pean "balance of power.' ' We have come into 
the struggle primarily for the protection of our 
own rights. But we cannot shirk our responsi- 
bility to mediate between ancient enmities and 
bring to the councils of Europe fresh inspira- 
tion and counsels of justice. We cannot become 
party to any adjustments based on desire for 
revenge, aggrandizement and power. We must 
be prepared to insist on the application of sound 
principles which shall ensure an enduring peace. 
Our own interests demand this, as well as the 
interests of the nations most vitally concerned. 
The sacrifices of this hideous struggle must not 
have been in vain. 



WORLD PEACE 239 

First of all, we may properly insist on the 
rights of nationalities, on the recognition of the 
principle "that governments derive all their 
just powers from the consent of the governed, 
and that no right anywhere exists to hand peo- 
ple about from sovereignty to sovereignty as 
if they were property.' ' The long fight of na- 
tionality and democracy must end in the fullest 
recognition of the right of men to group to- 
gether in accordance with their political, social, 
religious and economic preferences and preju- 
dices. Any substantial denial of these rights 
can only lead to future wars. There can be no 
just "enforcement of peace' ' where the legiti- 
mate claims of nationalism are not recognized. 
In further territorial readjustments, the wishes 
of the people immediately concerned should be 
ascertained as far as possible by plebiscites. 
But a small minority should never be permitted, 
in a spirit of selfish provincialism, to have the 
final decision where the larger interests of two 
or more nations are vitally involved. 

If it should prove impossible in every instance 
to satisfy fully the aspirations and claims of a 
whole people or of a relatively small district, 
their rights should be protected by the establish- 
ment of complete local self-government. The 
principle of autonomy is the logical corollary 
of the principle of nationality. It may not be 
possible or desirable to guarantee complete in- 
dependence to all aspirants for a separate na- 
tional state. Take Poland or Bohemia for 
example. Owing to their peculiar situation, and 



240 THE WORLD PERIL 

their relations to their neighbors, it would be 
excessively difficult for them to enjoy absolute 
independence. But the guarantee of the fullest 
degree of autonomy in affairs of a domestic, 
internal character would be the most essential 
right of democratic free peoples. They may 
not properly claim — any more than individuals 
— absolute freedom of action in their external 
relations. For the sake of compensating ad- 
vantages in protection and general welfare, they 
may well be content to sacrifice a certain amount 
of freedom. Any other pretensions might lead 
to anarchy in international affairs as they would 
within the state. 

A further principle which would seem to de- 
mand increasing recognition is that of interna- 
tional freedom of intercourse. The nations of 
the world are growing more and more depend- 
ent on each other, not alone for physical neces- 
sities, but for intellectual, artistic and moral 
satisfaction as well. The age of Chinese isola- 
tion is past. But so also should it be with 
economic warfare. Tariff frontiers and the ex- 
clusive exploitation of colonial markets do not 
conduce to world peace. 

It is true, unfortunately, that state aid to in- 
dustries in various guises, or low standards of 
living, may enable the manufacturers of a given 
country to flood foreign markets with cheaper 
goods. This in turn naturally compels other 
nations to raise protective dykes. This leads 
inevitably to friction, distrust, hatred and war 
itself. The end of economic warfare is disaster. 



WORLD PEACE 241 

The logical alternative of this lamentable 
state of affairs is a frank, generous, mutual 
understanding between nations concerning the 
basic questions of production and distribution. 
Whether one speaks of it as reciprocity, free- 
dom of trade, freedom of exchange, or — to em- 
ploy Mr. WeyPs phrase — "the economic inte- 
gration of the world, ' ' it would seem clear that 
the future peace of the world will depend in 
very large measure on the extent to which na- 
tions are able to reach generous agreements for 
regulated freedom of intercourse in all that 
makes life itself, as well as mere existence, worth 
while. The whole question strikes at the very 
roots of human welfare and happiness. 

These three basic principles of nationalism, 
autonomy and freedom of intercourse amply 
complement each other. They afford a happy 
solution for many trying European problems 
such as Bohemia, Poland, Ireland, and Trieste. 
In the case of Trieste, for example, where the 
nationalistic claims of Italy conflict with the 
economic interests of the Austrian hinter- 
land, the creation of a "free port" with com- 
plete autonomy under Italian sovereignty, and 
with absolute freedom of intercourse with Aus- 
tria would doubtless prove an equitable ar- 
rangement. 

These principles would seem to be the sound 
and just principles on which the maintenance 
of peace mainly depends. The statesmen of 
Europe, for honest or vicious motives, have 
heretofore been unwilling to grant the just 



242 THE WORLD PERIL 

claims of nationalism and democracy. They 
have been dazzled by the ignis fatuus of the 
cynical principle of the "balance of power.' ' 
If this principle should dominate or even exert 
a minor influence on the negotiations for peace 
which shall end this war, it would surely sow 
the seeds for future wars. The United States 
is bound to see that Europe shall free itself 
from this baleful influence which is a constant 
menace to the peace of the world. We have 
always stood for the principles of nationalism 
and democracy. We abandoned our neutrality 
because "neutrality is no longer feasible or de- 
sirable where the peace of the world is involved 
and the freedom of its peoples. ..." We are 
bound to insist on sound guarantees for the 
future peace and freedom of the world. Such 
guarantees would seem to lie mainly in respect 
for the principles of nationalism, autonomy 
and regulated freedom of international inter- 
course. We may not care to assume direct re- 
sponsibility for their application in the Balkans 
and elsewhere, but it would seem to be our duty 
to insist on their recognition wherever the peace 
of the world may be directly or indirectly in- 
volved. We must make certain that all the 
horror and the heroism of this "war against 
war" shall not have been in vain. 

To summarize briefly, our consideration of 
the objects of this war from the American point 
of view has led to the following conclusions : 

1 — The United States is protecting its own 



WOBLD PEACE 243 

vital interests. We were attacked by an outlaw 
and could do nothing else with self-respect than 
defend ourselves. Not content with inhuman 
attacks on our citizens and ships on the high 
seas, he conceived dastardly plots in our very 
midst. With cynical effrontery he dared at- 
tempt to incite Japan and Mexico against us 
with promises of American territory. Negotia- 
tion with such a scoundrel was as shameful as 
it was futile. 

2 — Once in the fight, we find our task to be 
something more than the satisfaction of a pri- 
vate grievance and the temporary protection 
of American interests. Our duty is to make 
certain that it never can happen again. We are 
seeking permanent guarantees of peace. We 
see that the Prussian regime is a perpetual 
menace to peace. Its control of the German 
people, its partnership with Austria-Hungary, 
Bulgaria and Turkey in a formidable Mittel- 
europa, because of its lust for world power is 
a portentous menace to the free democracies 
of the world. It will not be sufficient merely to 
thwart Prussia. A free democracy in Germany 
will be the only genuine guarantee of peace. 
In this sense, therefore, our war against Ger- 
many, though primarily for the defence of our 
vital interests, becomes a war in behalf of inter- 
national freedom. We have resolved that "the 
world must be made safe for democracy. ' ' 

3 — The war must not be permitted to end in 
a compromise with an outlaw. On the other 
hand, it must not degenerate into a war for re- 



244 THE WOELD PERIL 

venge, aggrandizement and power. The United 
States is bound to insist on reasonable guaran- 
tees for enduring peace. This is indeed ' ' a war 
against war." We must insist on the applica- 
tion of sound principles even though we may 
have no immediate concern in the local problems 
at issue. These principles would seem to be the 
rights of nationalities, of autonomy, and of reg- 
ulated freedom of intercourse. If the belliger- 
ents are willing to negotiate with each other in 
a spirit of equity, this world catastrophe will 
have proved a blessing. 

4 — There remains the further problem of in- 
ternational cooperation for the enforcement of 
rights, and the preservation of order and peace. 
The difficulties in the way of any formal or- 
ganization at this stage of development in the 
community of nations are many and great. If 
the law abiding, peace loving nations, however, 
are able to crush this outlaw, and then lay the 
foundations of peace in accordance with sound 
principles, they may have but little reason to 
concern themselves about the formation of 
1 i councils,' ' "leagues," police, or even of 
courts. The application of the Golden Rule as 
the rule of enlightened self-interest among na- 
tions will need hardly any other sanctions than 
its own sanction. The horrors of war must not 
be permitted to drive nations to adopt doubtful 
expedients for the maintenance of peace. There 
must be no menace of unjust coercion, and no 
denial of that freedom which is even more es- 
sential to nations than to individuals. 



WORLD PEACE 245 

5 — The ultimate problem of all must always 
remain that of seeking to bring about better 
understandings among nations. They must 
learn to understand each other first of all in 
order to sympathize with their respective aims. 
They must then learn to think alike concerning 
the basic interests, the rights and obligations 
of nations. 

This is a long process of education requiring 
the labor of generations. Yet we may confi- 
dently hope that this struggle will have proved 
a most powerful agency in making nations 
understand each other. A common task, a com- 
mon sacrifice and suffering should bring them 
to a clear vision of international justice. The 
union of the United States with sixteen other 
nations in the performance of the obligations 
of good international citizenship cannot fail to 
bring about a mutual understanding and re- 
spect that will firmly guarantee world peace. 

The revolution in German thought that must 
inevitably come about in the near future should 
by the workings of Providence bring them also 
to a just appreciation of the rights of other 
nations. They, too, through sacrifice and suf- 
fering will be brought to a realization of their 
duties as good international citizens. The great 
fight for international freedom will have at- 
tained its supreme triumph. The United States 
may then thank God that we were privileged to 
have our great share in so sublime a cause. 



M 94 89 






















0* „?*£?. *o. 




■V""V!afcV 



*0 Deacidified using the Bookkeeper p 
* Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxi( 
Treatment Date: jyj^j 

PreservationTechnoloi 

A WOatO LEADER IN PAPER PRESEfl 

111 Thomson Park Drive " 

r.ranhorrv Tnwnchin PA 1 KflKf 



# * • k * A 



;• ♦* ^ 



'fa v* .° 






■*o« 









^o*. ., 



0* » I * •» . *> V . .ill*. ^5. 









j. **. V 



> ,* 



i- -^ 



K *%&.*> %:™fr>'J> %/^*' 



r .,. 









% 



4V <° -' 







tECKMAN 

INOERY INC. 



N . MANCHESTER, 
INDIANA 46962 






AUG 89 I <f.*XL 



\ W Jjtffe %^ 



